


In the Eye of the Beholder

by orphan_account



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Body Dysphoria, Colors, Eating Disorder, Eating Disorders, M/M, Self-Harm, Soulmates, Soulmates AU, Suicide Attempts, Triggers, attempted suicide, eye-mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-04-21 07:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4821326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soulmates AU where people’s eyes all look their normal color to a normal person, but their soulmate sees their eye color differently, based on their mate’s emotions.<br/>Patrick has been hearing about soulmates all his life, and at the age of 21, he already knows there's no one for him.<br/>Pete had heard about the whole soulmate thing before, but it was entirely different experiencing it for himself. It's one thing to hear about seeing swirling colors in your better half's eyes; it's quite another to see them for yourself.<br/>Of course, that does bring up the question... what in the world had done that to Patrick's eyes?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *cough* Well, looks like I have once again managed to randomly start another fic in the middle of my ongoing one. Sorry bout that for any of you guys who are impatiently waiting for the next chapter; I'll get to that soon, don't worry.
> 
> On the other hand, I hope you all enjoy this fic!  
> Trigger Warnings: Self-harm, attempted suicide, body dysphoria and eating disorders. If any of this stuff could potentially hurt you, please, please don't read this and stay safe.

Patrick had always wanted a soulmate. 

It'd started when he was little, maybe four or five. He'd gone up to his mom, tugged on her pants and asked, "Momma, what's it like to have a soulmate?" 

His momma had just smiled and bent down, picking him up. "It's the best feeling in the world."

When he was finally back on the ground again, he resolved to himself that he was going to find that person, no matter the cost. 

 

* * *

 

It wasn't until he was older, maybe eight, that he learned about how you actually found your soulmate.

One day, he decided he'd had enough with not knowing, and ran up to his teacher and asked her, "Miss! How do you find a soul'ate?" 

She bent down, ruffled his gingery hair, and answered, a bit too slowly for Patrick's tastes, "You know how, when you look into someone's eyes, you just see one color, and how it never, ever changes?"

Patrick nodded eagerly. 

"Well, your soulmate sees your eyes differently than any other person. They see how you're feeling, instead of this solid blue, or green, or grey color that everyone else sees." 

"So..." he said slowly, not quite getting it, "How do you know you've found them?" 

His teacher looked down, lost in thought. "Sometimes you don't, not for a very long time." 

 

* * *

 

When he was 11 was when it all changed. 

Kids in his school were already starting to find their soulmates, even at the young age of 11-13, and Patrick was, like always, left out. He'd never been popular, being that short, chubby kid with a bad haircut and an annoying (according to the bullies) sense of humor he was, and when his only friend he'd managed to keep found his soulmate (an absolutely lovely girl with black hair and green eyes and really, if she wasn't his best friend's soulmate, he might've been into her, just a bit), he was absolutely alone.

"Why haven't I found my soulmate?" he asked his mom quietly, through a silent sob he endeavored to keep back and failed. _"Everyone_ is finding their soulmates, mom. Everyone but me."

"Don't worry," she soothed in return, stroking his hair softly, "You have plenty of time. I didn't find your father until I was 18." 

But despite her comforting words, something inside Patrick whispered with sharp, bitter amusement,  _maybe you're broken, Pattycakes. Maybe you'll never find anyone._

All of a sudden, Patrick wasn't so sure he was ever going to find his soulmate. 

 

* * *

 

On his 13th birthday was the day he first cut. 

It hadn't exactly been a nice day; his best friend of the year had, once again, managed to find his soulmate before Patrick and, since then, hadn't even _talked_ to Patrick, too wrapped up in his new boyfriend to even care. Add that to how the gang of bullies who hated him for absolutely no good reason had decided he'd make a good punching bag, both verbally and physically, and, well...

_Haven't found your soulmate, yet, huh?_

_Not surprising._

Kick.

 _Who'd_ want  _to spend the rest of their life with_ you? 

Punch.

_I feel bad for anyone who ends up having to, honestly. You're such a loser._

Kick.

_Isn't he, boys?_

Grunts of assent.

Another kick.

A dull throbbing sound as his head slammed into a locker.

_What, cat got your tongue?_

Muffled laughter.

_Can't say anything to that, can ya?_

_Can you?_

They were right. No woman  _or_ man- yes, he was pretty sure he was bisexual, get over it- would want nerd, loser, chubby, stupid,  _worthless_ Patrick Stump. He was sure of it. 

So as he grits his teeth and drags the razor over his hipbone, well... 

It's not like he's doing anything he doesn't deserve. 

 

* * *

 

When he's 15, he thinks he might've finally found the one.

Not his soulmate, obviously, but someone he could spend the rest of his life with. 

She's great, really; dark hair, bright eyes, a beautiful smile- and thinks he's worth something, which he disagrees with, but he's not going to fight with her. 

After all, she hasn't seen his legs; of course she doesn't know what secrets his body already houses.

For the first time in Patrick's short life, he thought that maybe, he'd finally made it. He didn't need a soulmate; she didn't need a soulmate, either. They could be happy together, even if, when Patrick looks into her eyes, all he sees is that unchanging brown, and even if, he's pretty sure she only sees his varied green/blue.

Then, of course, of fucking  _course..._ She meets her soulmate.

That night, he drags the blade deeper than he ever has before, angry at the whole fucking universe for doing this to him, wondering what colors his (nonexistent) soulmate would see in his eyes if they ever saw him. Would they see dark blue, the color of depression? Royal for sadness?Or would they just see jet black?

Would they just see no emotion whatsoever in his eyes as dead as he wishes his body was? 

 

* * *

 

He's 18, the age his mother was when she found her soulmate, and his is nowhere in sight.

He finally accepts it.

No one is made for him; he is made for no one. 

So that night, Patrick digs the blade in deep enough that this time, there's no turning back.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up the next morning to a group of sobbing people; his mom, dad, brother. 

No one asks why. It's not like it's unusual for a mate-less person to think they'll never find their mate and that death is better than the painful knowledge you have no one. 

They try to stick him in therapy; apparently the nurses noticed his scars. 

Patrick smiles and shakes his head politely, saying no, he's fine, he was just having an off day, and no, he won't cut again, he promises. 

Next time he cuts, he makes sure it's on his chest, not his legs and most definitely not on his arms.

 

* * *

 

His weight's the thing that bugs him the most. Why, he wonders, did he have to be born like this? Why not actually  _attractive?_ No wonder his soulmate doesn't want him (if he even exists); he's a fucking walking tree.

Maybe that wasn't the best metaphor, seeing as his last name is what it is, but the point is still there. He's not, by any stretch of the imagination, hot, or attractive, or even cute.

And, to make matters worse, his personality isn't that great, either; he's obnoxious, either too nice or a pervert, makes bad jokes, tends to laugh too much. 

Really, Patrick reflects, it's no wonder he hasn't found his soulmate. It's no wonder he most likely doesn't even  _have_ one! Why would God bother making a 'perfect' match for someone so  _flawed?_

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up in the hospital for a third time, at age 20 (second was that nasty time he 'accidentally' overdosed on drugs), it's because of 'severe malnutrition' or some bullshit like that.

Excuse you, he's not  _thin,_ he's fucking  _fat!_

But the nurses disagree, his family disagrees, and then after that, his therapist disagrees, too. 

 _You're skin and bones, Patrick!_ they tell him, not seeming to see the bitter amusement and disgust in his eyes as they finish the sentence (what a bunch of liars they are, really). 

He's  _not,_ how could he be?

And even if he was, how's that a bad thing? Skin and bones is  _beautiful,_ in his messed up, mate-less eyes. 

Maybe, if he can finally lose some weight, his soulmate might finally decide he's worth it.

 

* * *

 

The 3rd time wasn't the charm; apparently the 4th isn't, either. He's back in those sickening whitewashed walls with more cuts- in both wrists this time- and a pumped stomach.

No matter how hard he tries, it seems he's doomed to never succeed in  _anything;_ not in finding his soulmate, not in his fucking music career that never took off, and not even in doing what should be  _simple;_ dying.

He hates himself even more for his continued existence. He's already a fucking failure, and now he's just become more of one. Death should be _easy,_ simple, and he can't even do that. No wonder his soulmate hasn't shown up, not when he's as fucked up as he is. 

No, they've probably found a nice person, also without a soulmate, and married them instead of him- it's not exactly well liked by society, and often ends in abusive relationships or divorce, but it's accepted, even barely, and many people do it (mostly people whose soulmates died, but that's not the point). 

He honestly hopes they did- if they even exist, of course. He wants _them,_ at least, to be happy, since he knows that's not in the cards for him. He wants the one person he's supposed to love unconditionally to be able to be happy without a fuck-up like him in their life.

Patrick slowly stands up from the cold bench he'd spent the last hour or so on, feeling his cheeks burn in embarrassment as it takes far more effort than it should _(getting a little fat, there, Patty?)._ He knows he just got out of the hospital less than a day ago, but he really doesn't see the point in living. Maybe this time, his body will be weak enough they finally won't be able to save him. 

Then he looks over, to his right, and despite himself, a tiny smile fixes on his face. 

 _Or,_ he thinks, examining the bridge critically,  _there's that option, too._

Almost mechanically, he starts towards it, calculating the drop as he moves (over 100 feet) and smiling bigger when he realizes that, if he jumps off this, there's no going back. There'll be nothing anyone can do to keep him alive.

It's his way out.

10 steps from the edge, Patrick hears footsteps behind him and curses inwardly, quickening his pace. Knowing his luck, it's going to be his parents or someone like that; he just needs enough time to get there and throw himself over the edge and then he'll be done; finally, blessedly done. 

5 steps from the edge, and there's a voice behind him, a male's voice. "Stop! Don't do this!"

There's a weird tingling feeling that spreads through him at the sound of the guy's voice, but Patrick puts it off to the adrenaline coursing through him and ignores both that and the actual words he was saying. 

Never mind the fact that the tone was sort of hurt, like he knows Patrick somehow. Or that something in his voice seemed to say  _I've been through this, too, don't do it. It's not worth it._

Honestly? Patrick was too far gone to care. He'd been wanting to die since 18- before that, really. No stranger was going to change his life that drastically.

2 steps. The footsteps are running, now, and the man's voice is desperate. Patrick still doesn't care, though. He's in that desperate state of mind where there's only one thing that matters, and that's getting out. He doesn't care if he's being mean, or selfish, or annoying, because none of that's going to matter in just one ste-

Behind him, there's a loud  _no!_ and then a body knocks into him and shoves him to the ground.

"What the he-" Patrick glares up at the man-

And freezes. 

His eyes are stark gray, the color of fear, swirling around mixed with violet (pain) and maroon (concern). They're breathtaking, even when the man blinks and they turn solid brown- what Patrick guesses are their normal color- for a moment before going back to their original colors. 

The other man, in turn, looks somewhere between nauseated and horrified, which Patrick totally gets- see, he knew all along, even his soulmate wouldn't fucking like him. 

"See?" he snaps, inwardly wincing at his tone.  _"This_ is what you got matched with. You should've let me die, spared you the trouble of ever knowing me."

"Don't you  _fucking dare,"_ the man snaps back, his eyes flickering deep orange and yellow- not red, which is good, because red means more intense anger; yellow and orange are softer (yellow's betrayal, from what Patrick's heard, but he's not going to think about that right now). "Don't you fucking  _dare_ try to do that ever again." 

"I've done it three times already," Patrick retorts, shoving the other man- his soulmate- off of him in a huff. "You weren't there for those, why do you suddenly think you're entitled to saying whether I live or die after _saving_ me  _once?"_

His soulmate clenches his jaw, his eyes sparking a little deeper orange, but he seems to force himself to calm down because when he speaks, his tone is relatively calm. "If you hadn't noticed, we're _soulmates,"_ is his reply.

"That doesn't give you the right," Patrick protests, trying to stand up and being stopped when the other man grabs his arms and pulls Patrick towards himself. 

"Don't," he tells Patrick quietly, a desperate edge in his tone and eyes. "It might not, but I want you alive, I want you  _okay._ I want to be with you, fall in love with you..."

Patrick rips himself forcefully out of his soulmate's grip and stands up. "Then you'll need to find someone else," he hisses.

"But I want  _you,"_ the other man retorts, standing up also and stepping towards the edge as if trying to make sure he can stop Patrick if he makes a running leap. 

Patrick grits his teeth, closing his eyes and putting his face in his hands, trying to hold back tears- of what, he doesn't know. "Not once you know me," he mutters, turning away from the other man. 

"Give me a chance," his soulmate pleads, turning Patrick back around. "Give me just one chance."

Patrick glares at him.

"A week," he begs, his eyes torn between hurt purple and sad blue and  _fuck,_ seeing his soulmate in pain shouldn't hurt that much. Does his soulmate feel Patrick's own pain, too? "A week," he repeats. "Just give me one week." 

Patrick sighs. What difference could a week make?

"Fine," he concedes.

His soulmate's eyes lit up, turning light pink with happiness- Patrick feels half horrified (he was already  _that_ invested? This isn't good) and half surprised (how the hell could just one word get that reaction?) with that knowledge.

"I'm Pete Wentz," he announces, holding his hand out to enact the first (ritual) touch of soulmates that's done for the bonding process to begin. 

Patrick meets hands, slightly reluctantly, and a brilliant golden glow spreads out from their joined hands- which Patrick thinks is weird because the normal joining color is white, or maybe pink, but he supposes the intricacies of soul bonds are mysteries even to the mates themselves. 

With another sigh, he answers, "I'm Patrick Stump."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, so, trigger warnings are basically what they were for last chapter: suicide attempt(s), suicidal thoughts, basically every trigger warning for suicide that ever existed (except the actual deed itself), and mentions/references of eating disorders.

Pete was nine when he first learned about soulmates.

To be fair, no one he knew- not his parents, or his aunt and uncle, or his best friend's parents- were soulmates, so it makes sense why he was completely in the dark until then.

Really, he probably wouldn't have known until he was 11 or so, if it hadn't been for that one kid who would  _not shut up_ about soulmates; how to find them, what  _magical_ abilities they have (the list goes on and on; telepathy, for one), and so on, he would've been in the dark for much longer. 

But, as it was, the day he heard about  _soulmates,_ he went home to his parents and asked them. 

They went through a long, lengthy explanation about how soulmates are two people who were created to be together; how some people don't always find theirs and some have theirs taken from them, and how that's okay, mommy and daddy aren't soulmates and they have a perfectly fine relationship...

Pete zoned out after that point. He didn't really see the point in continuing to listen, especially now that he has what he wanted to know in the first place. 

But... Pete has to admit... this soulmate thing sounds pretty nice. He thinks he likes the idea of, you know, having someone made for you. Pete thinks that'd be pretty nice, really. 

So from that point on, he makes a point to look into as many people's eyes as possible. He can't miss his soulmate, after all.

 

* * *

 

By the time Pete's 13, he's fairly certain he's bi- bipolar, that is. Not bisexual.

Although he's pretty sure he's that, too. 

He doesn't tell anyone, of course; just keeps to himself, forcing the loneliness and depression down and only letting it out in the form of silent words written down on his laptop or journal. 

He's still searching for his soulmate, but he thinks that maybe, maybe he won't ever find one.

Surely, feeling this way isn't normal, is it?

 

* * *

 

At 18, he's in that Best Buy parking lot, alone. He's not really sure what prompts him to do it; just that there's this voice in his head screaming  _end it, end it, end it._

When he wakes up in a hospital, still alone, he's not sure what to think. He's not really relieved, but he's not disappointed, either. There's just this feeling of nothingness and loneliness, and Pete wants more than ever to finally see his soulmate, know he's not alone. 

He tries not to think that maybe, there's no one for him. That maybe he's destined to be alone.

 

* * *

 

He's 24 and he thinks he might have finally hit rock bottom. He's sitting in his room with the lights off except for the faint light of his laptop, on his back staring up at the ceiling with a mind torn between screaming and crying. He doesn't get any of this; why was it  _him_ that had to be picked to suffer through this? What has he ever done to deserve anything as horrifying as this?

Really, Pete could scarcely wish this on that dude who bullied him in high school for being an _emo fag_ or whatever. He could scarcely wish it on anybody. This  _sucks,_ depression and being bipolar fucking  _sucks_ but no one cares, _no one_ cares if he's having a bad day- he's just an 'attention seeker' or 'overemotional' and so, Pete's learned to hide. 

Not like that stops the pain.

Lying hurts, but it's sickeningly easy after more than 10 years of perfectly faked smiles, confused expression and  _I'm fine, why would you think I'm not?_ 's. It's  _too_ easy and Pete wants his soulmate more than ever because he wants someone that can, for once, see through his lies and call out his bullshit. 

But he's 24, past the age most people find their soulmates, and he's alone. 

Pete laughs bitterly into the darkness and covers his face in his hands, trying to pretend the wetness he feels there aren't tears. 

He supposes that maybe, soulmates just aren't for him.

 

* * *

 

He's 25 and the ache's gone away some. He tries dating other people, with varied success. No one seems  _right,_ no one clicks with him like he feels they need to, especially if they're spending a lifetime together (because Pete wants someone he can build a life with, adopt kids with, do all those disgustingly cheesy coupley things with). 

No one feels  _right._

As Pete sits across his third blind date of the week (a guy with black hair and blue eyes and very, in his opinion, boring), for the first time, he feels just the tiniest tendril of hope.

Maybe there is someone out there for him, after all?

 

* * *

 

Pete's not really sure what brought him there, to this particular park; just that, for some reason, his brain thought it'd be a good idea. He kinda blames the whole bipolar thing on it, even though he knows, logically, that that has nothing to do with it. 

He walks around a bit, making a mental note to get a gym membership because this little bit of exercise shouldn't be so exhausting, and then he sees it.

Well,  _him._

The  _him_ in question is a little guy, maybe an inch or two shorter than he is, with gingery blond hair that's currently making his way towards that huge bridge that overlooks the pond. There's a certain urgency to his movements that makes Pete pause, because he thinks he's felt what that guy's feeling, and he needs to stop this before it gets too late.

He starts speed-walking towards him, eyes narrowing when the shorter man picks up his pace into a half-jog, aiming straight for the edge (shit, he's really going to do it, isn't he?)

"Stop! Don't do this!" he shouts before he can stop himself. The other man doesn't pause, just keeps going, so Pete starts running, covering the remaining distance as fast as he can. A step before the other guy is at the edge, Pete throws himself forward, knocking said other guy to the ground with a desperately screamed  _no!_

Once he's done so, Pete has just enough time to register that no one should feel this... _bony..._ and that something's seriously wrong, before the guy he's currently on top of wrestles out of his grip and bites out, "What the _he-"_

He freezes the moment they make eye contact, which Pete totally gets because, well, he's doing the same. 

The other man's- his  _soulmate's,_ _oh my God-_  eyes are the deepest purple he's ever seen, mixed with dark blue, indigo... and  _black._

His soulmate's eyes are fucking partially  _black._

Pete doesn't even want to  _think_ about what his mate has gone through that could do  _this_ to him. He'd always been taught that purple was pain; the deeper the purple, the more painful, and that his mate's eyes have a purple so deep it almost mixes with _black,_ the color used to signify emotional deadness...

He feels sick. Why hasn't he been there for his mate? Why couldn't he find him sooner? He could've  _helped,_ he could've made it better- and his mate could've made  _him_ better- but  _no,_ the universe is fucking  _stupid_ and-

"See?" his soulmate interrupts, eyes lightening to baby blue in hurt. "This is what you got matched with. You should've let me die, spared you the trouble of ever knowing me."

Pete just stares at him, not comprehending what the other man just said. How could he  _think_ that Pete regrets seeing him? Hell, he's only seen him for a minute and he's already  _beautiful_ to Pete- not healthy, certainly, which isn't good, but even though he's unhealthy, he's still beautiful. 

He blinks, feeling anger start to build. "Don't you  _fucking dare,"_ he hisses, trying to collect his thoughts. He's not even sure why he's so mad; maybe he's mad that his soulmate tried to leave him? Yeah, that's probably it. "Don't you fucking dare try to do that ever again." 

"I've done it three times already," his soulmate bites back, his eyes somewhere between angry and that stupid recurring light blue as he shoves Pete off of him. "You weren't there for those, why do you suddenly think you're entitled to saying whether I live or die after saving me once?" 

Pete opens his mouth, anger rising despite himself. The fucking  _idiot_ thinks he can just off himself and Pete won't even  _care?_ Of course he will! 

But, Pete reminds himself as he forces himself to calm down, this little dude's been through a lot and Pete knows from experience anger doesn't usually get you anywhere. "If you hadn't noticed," he retorts, "We're soulmates."

"That doesn't give you the right!" his soulmate tries to stand up and Pete sort of tackles him again. He can't risk his soulmate trying to jump again. He just  _can't._

"Don't," Pete says, very quietly. The silent  _don't leave me_ is there; Pete doubts his soulmate hears it, though. "It might not," he bites out with difficulty, "But I want you alive, I want you okay. I want to _be_ with you, fall in _love_ with you..."

His soulmate looks down. Pete can practically  _sense_ the pain radiating off of him, and somehow it hurts him, too. He opens his mouth, likes he's going to say something, but then his eyes flicker orange and he rips out of Pete's grip and stands up, Pete following suit and moving over to the edge to prevent him from jumping (just in case).

"Then you'll need to find someone else," Pete's soulmate snaps, trying to sound angry and apparently forgetting that, fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint), Pete can read him just by looking in his eyes. He's lost and scared and hurt, so hurt- Pete's not a fucking doctor, how the hell is he supposed to fix this? He doesn't know  _how._

"But I want  _you,"_ Pete says desperately. 

He expects his soulmate to start screaming, or at least try to argue, but instead he just turns away and covers his face in his hands and stays silent.

Finally, after a minute or so, he mumbles, "Not once you know me."

"Give me a chance," Pete pleads instantly, trying to turn his soulmate back around. "Give me just one chance."

His soulmate glares at him; Pete's unperturbed because his eyes are still purple in pain, without even the slightest hint of actual anger.

"A week," he tries again. This time his soulmate seems a little bit less stony, so he continues. "A week, just give me one week."

His soulmate sighs and Pete knows he's won. "Fine," he huffs and Pete's instantly ecstatic. 

It must've shown, because his soulmate looks slightly horrified, but Pete's past the point of caring. He has a week to get his mate to fall in love with both him and his own soulmate's self, and maybe that's all he needs. 

"I'm Pete Wentz," he tells his soulmate, extending his hand so the whole soulmate bonding ritual whatever can begin (it only takes a week to complete; it's not commonly known knowledge, though, so he doubts Patrick knew that when he accepted Pete's terms). 

His soulmates meets their hands, sending an almost electric tingle through him, the kind that's written about in fairytales and storybooks, and a brilliant, golden glow spreads from their hands that Pete is going to think more about later.

"I'm Patrick Stump," his soulmate says resignedly. 

 

* * *

 

The moment the glow begins to fade, Pete's soulmate-  _Patrick-_ tries to tear his hand away (Pete tries to ignore how the rejection hurts and fails) and Pete has to stop him.

"Our symbols haven't been etched on yet," he protests. Patrick gives him a skeptical eyebrow, but keeps his hand interlocked with Pete's.

"What symbols?"

"When...when soulmates touch for the first time, they're both given a unique symbol. It can be anything from, like, a bass clef to a snowflake," Pete explains. "It's unique only to them, and usually, only they can see it. Sort of like a secret message."

"And you know this... how, exactly?" Patrick still doesn't look convinced.

"I, um..." he scratches his head awkwardly. "I...may or may not have majored in Soulmate psychology in college." 

Patrick blinks. "You're kidding me."

"No, I'm really not."

"That's a thing?" 

"Hey! Don't insult my major!" he's laughing now, and, thank God, Patrick is too. For the first time in his life, Pete actually feels comfortable with someone else, not stilted. He thinks he likes that feeling. 

Patrick giggles a final time (really, how can Patrick's fucking  _laughter_ be that adorable?) before sobering and looking down at their still joined hands. "Can we like, stop holding hands now?" 

Again, Pete tries not to get hurt by the rejection- and, again, fails, except this time Patrick seems to see how his face falls. "Not- not because I don't like touching you. I do, just- wait, no! I, I just..." he trails off, looking defeated and Pete just laughs. 

"Yeah, we should be fine now. The symbols should've formed, you don't have to touch me anymore."

"Good," Patrick says quickly, both his eyes and cheeks kinda pink with embarrassment. It's weird, seeing someone's eyes as fucking  _pink,_ but honestly, Pete thinks he can get used to it. Pete gives Patrick a smirk, which just intensifies his mate's blush (he's got a really cute blush, Pete has to admit). Patrick looks down at their joined hands and Pete thinks it could be him, but he seems reluctant to relinquish his grip on Pete. 

"So," Pete half-whispers awkwardly. "Uh."

Patrick gives him a little half-smile as if to encourage him to continue. 

"Um..." he tries again. "Do you... do you want to go... get, you know, a... a coffee or something?" 

Patrick laughs and Pete feels like he just got stabbed in the heart, but then Patrick goes on, giving Pete a grin he's pretty sure could power the sun. "As long as you're paying, Pete."

He smiles back. "You can count on it."

 

* * *

 

He doesn't know how they ended up like this- and by that he means on Pete's sofa, cuddling together _(with_ their clothes on, sadly)- but really, Pete wouldn't trade it for the world. 

Patrick's legs are entwined with his, one arm is wrapped tightly Pete, and his head is buried into the other man's chest. 

Just looking at him, his steady breathing mingled with the annoying percussive sounds of the AC, with a bit of sunlight lighting up his hair, Pete thinks he's already falling so hard he can barely breathe. _  
_

He just hopes that when he hits the ground, Patrick will be there to catch him. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: Basically nothing; a couple mentions of suicide, implied/referenced weight issues, and that's about it. 
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy!

When Patrick wakes up, the first thing he realizes is that he's  _warm._

He's spent his life cold; he runs cold, as a fact, and recently, after he started his... _diet..._ he's been even colder, which, when grouped together with the whole overweight and ugly thing, just makes Patrick hate himself more.

But he shoves those thoughts away quickly. He doesn't need to think about this right now, especially not with Pete...

 _Wait._ Pete.

Something moves underneath Patrick and his eyes snap open as he looks wildly around, only to sigh when his brain catches up with what's happening.

Yep, he's on top of Pete.

A shirtless, pantsless Pete who's clothed only in his underwear.

 _Well, isn't this a good start to his day,_ Patrick thinks sarcastically, thinking through his options. He could pretend to be asleep until Pete wakes up and then pretend that his soulmate's awakening woke _him_ up; he could wake up Pete, or he could do the most viable option and just run.

But when he tries to get up, unravel himself from Pete's (tight but somehow not uncomfortable) embrace, and maybe, you know, run from his house and hope he thinks yesterday was just a dream, his mate just tightens his hold, yanking Patrick back down against him.

He's uncomfortably aware of how the fat on his sides and thighs presses into Pete's chest and legs (even through his long sleeved shirt and pants); the feeling just intensifies when Pete adjusts his grip on Patrick, somehow pulling him even closer (how it's even possible, Patrick doesn't know), but there's no way he can escape. He just has to wait it out and hope his soulmate wakes up soon.

Or, Patrick thinks with a sigh, there's that second option.

Without another thought, he jams his elbow down, hitting what he thinks is Pete's side.

Of course, when Pete wakes up with a howl, he realizes he was a bit too far center, but you know, those things happen. 

"What the fuck, Patrick!?" Pete yelps drowsily- which, honestly, creeps Patrick out that Pete assumed it was him without even opening his eyes- and covers his crotch protectively.

"Sorry, it was an accident," Patrick defends, finally managing to get out of Pete's arms and standing up, relieved. 

"Sure it was," Pete retorts, though he doesn't look angry, just a bit annoyed. And in pain.

"You're practically naked  _and_ you were basically  _spooning_ me! I had a right to do that!"

"I was not  _spooning_ you. Spooning is when you're lying on your sides, and we were both on our back...our backs...ish." 

"Regardless, I've known you for less than a day, I wake up, and you're literally hugging me with almost no clothes on? Pete, that's-"

"What's wrong, 'Trick? Am I too sexy for you?" he leans forward, disheveled and looking pretty much still half-asleep, licking his lips suggestively, and for a half-second, Patrick's tempted. He remembers, just in time, to close his eyes and turn away so Pete won't see his eyes because it wouldn't do for him to see how much, just for a second, Patrick wanted that.

Fucking soulbond.

 _"'Trick?"_ he manages, keeping his head turned away from Pete and his voice as steady as possible.

"Yeah, I thought it sounded better than Pat." 

Patrick shrugged, "Yeah, it does. I always hated being called Pat." 

"See?" Pete beams. "I'm doing good already!"

Patrick stiffens.

All of a sudden, this whole... whatever it is... it just seems like a bad idea and Patrick's not even sure why he agreed to this in the first place. It's not like finding his soulmate has made him suddenly love himself, or think he's finally worth something- or, God forbid, want to stop dying. It's not made his body become beautiful or his personality change for the better.

Sooner or later, Pete's gonna realize how much of a waste of time and space Patrick is and really, he doesn't think he's going to be able to survive his own fucking  _soulmate_ turning on him.

His mother might've been able to, but him? There's no way he'll be able to do that. 

"I need to go," he mumbles, straightening his clothes and turning towards the door. 

"'Trick, wait!" Pete grabs at him, managing to catch one of Patrick's wrists and turn him back around. "You promised me a week, remember?"

"I promised I'd stay alive for a week," Patrick retorts, ripping his hand out of Pete's grip. "I never said I'd stay _with_   _you_ for one." 

Pete's eyes turn light blue and Patrick instantly regrets what he said, but there's no going back now, and besides, it's for the better. Neither of them will grow attached; neither of them will get hurt in the end.

"It's for the best," Patrick repeats, this time out loud and (hopefully) more convincing.

"How do you know?" his soulmate asks challengingly. 

Patrick hesitates. "I..."

"You don't, do you? Then why are you leaving?"

He tries to look away, but Pete grabs his chin, a little roughly despite his efforts to be gentle, and forces his gaze back. "Tell me why."

Patrick remains silent, looking down. 

"You're afraid," Pete states after a long moment. 

_Obviously._

"What are you afraid of?"

Silence.

"'Trick, what are you so scared of? We're soulmates, you know, there's nothing to be afraid of."

Patrick tries not to flinch at the word  _soulmate;_ thankfully Pete's thick enough he doesn't notice. 

"Come on, 'Trick, just one week with me," Pete begs. 

Patrick grits his teeth. He has nothing against Pete (quite the opposite, really), but he just  _can't risk_ growing close to someone that could possibly let him down. And, well, forgive him for saying this, but Pete doesn't exactly seem reliable.

If anything, Pete should be the one relying on Patrick, not the other way around- Patrick can already tell that if they ever got in a relationship, it'd be Patrick that screwed everything up.

Like usual. 

And he's not letting that happen; he's just  _not._

"Please? With cherries and pizza on top?"

Patrick grimaces, "You eat your sundae with pizza on top?"

"It's a figure of speech!" Patrick rolls his eyes at him. "So will you do it?"

Patrick glares at him, but Pete must've realized he's cracking because he adds another drawn-out please and a few seconds of puppy eyes and then Patrick's done.

"Fine," he huffs, exasperated, rolling his eyes as Pete's eyes light up pink with happiness. 

 

* * *

 

"So, what do you wanna do first?" Pete asks excitedly, bouncing around like an over-exuberant puppy with eyes that alternate between their original brown and pinkish for excitement/happiness- which Patrick could've figured out without even looking, thanks a lot. 

"I don't really want to do anything," Patrick replies, drumming out a soft, mindless beat on the sofa. 

"Do you drum?" Pete asks quickly, making Patrick snap his head up.

"No."

"You liar," Pete sings, grinning and looking even giddier. "You do! We should go to my studio, we could practice and shit." 

"I don't think that'd be a go- wait, you own a studio?"

"Yeah," Pete says, waving a hand awkwardly. "Parents are, um, a bit wealthy."

"Oh." Patrick doesn't make further comment; he knows how sensitive of a topic family can be. 

"Anyway, we should go, come on." Pete grabs Patrick's hand without hesitation and drags him towards the door, Patrick protesting all the way.

 

* * *

 

"Remind me why we're here again," Patrick grumbles, scuffing at the floor with his shoe.

"So you can play drums and impress me with your talent," Pete replies in the same tone most people would use for  _duh!_

"You've never even heard me! I could be horrible at them."

"You won't be," Pete states confidently. 

"What makes you think that?"

"Just a guess. Come on, let's go!"

Patrick grumbles some more but follows his soulmate into the room, looking around at the set-up. It's pretty average; drumkit, mic, a couple of guitars, keyboard, a bass guitar...

"Do you play anything?" he asks Pete, more as a conversation filler than anything.

"Yeah, bass guitar. Do you do anything other than drums?"

"Um, yeah. Keyboard, guitar, um, I tried French horn a bit..."

"Can you sing?"

Patrick freezes. "N-no..." This whole thing is moving too fast; first drums, then Pete's learned about all the other instruments he plays, now he's probably going to find out how he's lying...

"'Trick."

Called it.

"N-not very well," he amends, looking down nervously. 

"Sing something," Pete demands, making Patrick glare at him.

"You can't tell me to sing something just like that!"

"I just did." 

"B-but, I'm, I'm not very good."

Pete sighs. "Just fucking sing, Patrick, oh my God." 

He grumbles out a  _fine_ and wracks his brain for something to sing that won't sound too terrible, finally settling on  _Can't Help Falling In Love_ by Elvis Presley, which he promptly regrets after he sings the first note because  _fuck that's so cliche_  and he doesn't even like the song _that_ much.But he keeps going, turning his gaze away from Pete so he won't see the judgement he knows he's already about to hear once he finishes.

Then he does, and there's this  _silence._ It's so uncomfortable, Patrick finally turns back around, only to see Pete staring at him like... he doesn't know, like he suddenly sprouted wings and a halo or something.

"'Trick," Pete breathes, "That was awesome." 

Patrick stares at him blankly for at least 10 seconds before he manages to get himself out of his shock. "What?"

"It was...that was amazing, 'Trick."

"No it wasn't," he retorts, recovering quickly. "You're my soulmate, it's required to like everything I do."  _At least, until you start hating them like my dad did._ _  
_

Pete scoffs. "No, I think it's amazing because it  _is_ and I promise I'm not the only one who's gonna think so."

"What do you mean- Pete, if you recorded any of that I swear to God-" 

Pete holds his hands up, laughing. "I didn't, calm down, Lunchbox." 

Patrick gives him a look. 

"What? Lunchbox is a perfectly fine nickname!"

Somewhere deep inside Patrick aches because even his own fucking soulmate thinks he's overweight, but he keeps silent because that's what he does- he keeps his shit secret and hidden. He's good at it, and he knows not even his own fucking soulmate can find  _that_ out without Patrick's consent. So when he answers, it's exasperated and he makes sure Pete could never tell anything's wrong. 

"Pete, that's like me calling you Asshole or something."

Pete makes a face. "But you're so adorable, what else am I supposed to call you?"

"Maybe, you know, like Patrick?"

He makes another face. "Boring. I like 'Trick and Lunchbox much better."

Patrick sighs inwardly but doesn't say anything except "Suit yourself, then," because if there's one thing he's learned about Pete, it's that it's useless to argue with him.

 

* * *

 

Somehow, they once again ended up on a sofa; it's just Patrick's this time (and much more comfortable, if you ask him). They're watching some confusing TV show that Patrick has no idea what's even going on in and Pete has his head in Patrick's lap- which he hates because he can practically feel his stomach hit Pete's head with every breath, but there's not really a way out because if he mentions it to Pete, his soulmate will probably suddenly realize just how overweight Patrick is and...

"What's your favorite color?"

The question's so cliche and unexpected it takes Patrick a moment to process; when he does, he just stares at Pete for another moment. "What?"

"What's your favorite color?" Pete repeats. 

"Um...I guess...brown, maybe," Patrick mumbles. "I don't really have a favorite."

Pete nods slowly. "I like turquoise," he tells Patrick even though the other man never asked him. "Like, you know, I guess not really turquoise, but sort of like, blue-green... brownish." 

Patrick just sort of nods again and lowers a hand to Pete's head, stroking his hair as they both turn back to the TV show.

 

It doesn't even occur to him until later that both of their favorite colors have, all along, been the colors of their soulmate's eyes. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first things first. I just got out of surgery and I'm super hyped up on pain meds and all that other stuff, so if there are parts of the chapter with typos, weird grammar things, or sentences that don't make sense, that's the pain meds talking, not me, so don't judge me for that. Once I feel better- hopefully within three days- I'll go back through and try to edit it, but until then, please bear with me.  
> Now, trigger warnings: Eating disorder, mentions of suicide.

Nights, Patrick thinks with a sigh, are particularly bad. Especially when Pete's already fast asleep (insomniac, yeah right) in his lap, completely oblivious to his entire thought process.

Not all nights are bad, of course. Not all nights of his are spent wishing he was dead, making himself bleed, knowing he'll never be loved...

Yeah, he's lying.  _All_ nights of his are spent like that. 

Getting a soulmate hasn't changed that. It hasn't made his depression magically go away. People that think that a relationship will automatically make you better are, to put it lightly, downright idiots. Just because there's a possibility you'll receive support when you ask for it doesn't mean that you will a, get said support, or b, even ask for it.

People without depression just don't get it, Patrick reflects. Depression doesn't just make you tired and grumpy and sometimes under the weather. Depression makes you uncertain and doubtful of every sign of support from everyone, cynical and unbelieving of love, and unwilling to ask for help, both for pride and because you're afraid they'll just laugh. Because laughing or getting mad is the worst thing you can do to someone like him.

No, depression isn't a  _mood._ It's not something that can be turned on and off. It comes when you least want and expect it, ripping at you with sharp claws and sharper words.

Depression isn’t _beautiful_ like media tries to make it out to be- It isn’t that petty sadness you get when you hear a sad song, or when you cry after seeing someone die in a movie. It’s not that indignant hurt when one of your friends can’t go out with you because your mom said you had to do homework. It’s not a star actress with tears running down her cheeks sobbing about how this man will never love her. It’s not a beautiful teenager being overemotional after a bad day.

Depression is a _disease._ It’s poison, a deadly illness that destroys you from the inside out, slowly eating away at your brain with whispers of _not good enough, fucking worthless, you think you deserve to have friends? To eat? To_ live?

Depression is dying on the inside while on the outside you look perfectly fine. It's faking a smile and laughing whenever someone asks you if you’re okay. It’s pretending people’s casual remarks about how you’ll never get a husband that loves you for your personality instead of your looks or how you’re too fat or not curvy enough, too tall or too short, too ugly and not even pretty, it’s pretending that those don’t hurt, then giving a forced chuckle and agreeing with them because _they’re right, you_ are _fucking worthless._

Depression is 2 a.m., forcing yourself to stop crying because you have no right to cry, you don’t deserve to do something like that- you don’t deserve to give in to the weakness because you’re already so fucking weak and now you’re doing that, too?

Depression is sitting at a table with people that call themselves your friends, listening to their conversations that never include you and wondering if they’d even miss you if you just…died, one day. It’s thinking that, if you got run over or shot in the head, that they wouldn’t even miss you.

Depression is knowing that you’ll never find someone who loves you for you, that anyone who ever knows the true you will leave because who could ever love the mess that is yourself?

No one.

Depression is not _beautiful._ It's death. 

And that... Patrick shifts, lifting Pete's head off his lap. That is why he knows Pete can never love him.  _No one_ can love someone that's this messed up, this broken. This  _dead._

So that's why he can't let Pete continue to be with him. He's just going to poison him until Pete turns into his father and Patrick can't escape- just like his mother never could. He's messed up enough, broken enough, and he doesn't want to test just how much more Pete could break him. 

With a sigh, he leans his head back against a pillow and closes his eyes. In the morning, he'll make sure he gets Pete out of his life, this time for good.

Then, maybe, he can go back to that bridge and finish what he started. 

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up, he's warm, so warm that he unconsciously burrows further into it. Even though he woke up warm yesterday, it's still such a strange feeling, and Patrick thinks he enjoys it far too mu...

_Wait._

His eyes snap open and he looks around wildly, grimacing when he realizes that, once again, he and Pete are wrapped around each other in a pretzel shape he's not sure he knows how to get out of. 

_Great._

At least Pete's fully clothed this time; that's a plus. He doesn't need the...distraction (so what, Pete's attractive, he's only human after all). But he's still all over Patrick, his arms wrapped around Patrick's torso (Patrick recoils in horror as best he can because how the hell had he allowed that? The first thing Pete's gonna see is how  _fat_ Patrick is).

Which, he supposes isn't that bad, now that he thinks about it. Well, of course it's horrifying and all the rest, but maybe it'll finally make Pete leave him. Maybe, once his soulmate sees how little- or rather, too much- he has to offer him, Pete'll leave.

He tries to summon up happiness because once Pete leaves, he's free to off himself, but he just feels a bit pained and sickened at the idea that Pete's gonna leave him. Like everyone else.

 _Shut up, idiot,_ he tells himself harshly.  _You deserve to be alone. Don't you go getting sad now, you piece of shit. You're not made for soulmates or love or white picket fences. Now get control of yourself and stop feeling._

Patrick closes his eyes. He breathes deeply once, twice, three times, blinks, and forces his hands to unclench.

_There. Much better, isn't it?_

Before he can respond to the cynical voice in his head, Pete stirs next to him, pulling Patrick to him and squishing the blond up against him uncomfortably. 

"'Trick..." he mumbles, next to a long string of incoherent words that Patrick's honestly kind of happy he can't make out, although that could be due to the fact that he's frantically trying to figure a way out of Pete's embrace. He  _hates_ being held like this; it only serves as a constant reminder of how much of a failure he is- can't even fucking lose weight, no matter how many days he goes without eating. 

But Pete doesn't release his hold and Patrick's too  _fat_ to wiggle out of it, so he resigns himself to staying in his soulmate's hold, somewhere between silently seething and wanting to scream for the hour it takes for Pete to wake up. 

When Pete finally begins to stir again, Patrick almost cries with relief and half wriggles, half bolts out of his grip, watching Pete wake up from the other side of the couch. 

"Mornin 'Trick," Pete half mumbles, dragging a hand over his eyes and looking up at his soulmate. 

"Good morning," he answers a bit formally; best to act as detached as possible in case his brain finally gets the memo to stop telling him what he's doing is  _wrong_ and needs to stop.

Pete gives him a confused look but doesn't comment, instead straightening his clothes and hair and giving a huge yawn. "So, what are we doing today?"

Patrick takes a deep breath.  _Do it. "We_ aren't doing anything, Pete."

His soulmate stiffens, turning around to look at him with something between surprise and horror. "No. You're not kicking me out," he half-pleads, his brown eyes turning light blue and teal. It's painful enough, knowing that  _he's_ the reason Pete's hurting, that Patrick has to turn away.

"No, 'Trick, you don't get to do that. I'm not letting you get rid of me." Patrick hears the couch springs creak and then Pete's in front of him, forcing his chin up to meet Pete's eyes. Afraid of what his soulmate might see in his eyes, he closes them and does his best to turn around despite Pete's hands on his face.

"Look at me," Pete commands. Patrick tries not to shiver at his tone- it's too much like his father's whenever he was mad at his mom. 

He just hopes that this conversation isn't going to go in the same path it always did with his parents. 

"Patrick, look at me."

He turns back around, opening his eyes with the resignation of a man already doomed. He has no idea what Pete was going to see when he looked in his eyes; all he can see Pete's eyes hurt-filled eyes mixed with concern and a myriad of other colors he's not going to try to read right now. 

"'Trick," Pete whispers, disturbing Patrick's thoughts and hugging him tightly. 

"Get  _off_ me!" Patrick shrieks instinctively, wrenching Pete's hands back in sheer terror.  _No, no, God no, if he hasn't realized how fat I am already, he certainly has now._

"Wait- Patrick, what, what did I do?" Pete asks as his eyes gray over in fear- fear that he hurt Patrick. 

 _He's lying,_ Patrick's brain hisses.  _He's faking it. He doesn't really care. Just like Dad never cared bout Mom. Except to hurt her._

"Just... just go," Patrick says quietly, all the fight suddenly draining out of him. 

"'Trick..."

"Leave!" 

"No." 

Patrick stiffens, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. "No?"

"I'm not leaving you, Patrick." 

"So that's what you're trying to do, is it?" Patrick lets out an almost insane sounding laugh and runs a hand through his hair. "You're not gonna let me be free, huh? I'm supposed to be chained to you for the rest of my life and there's no way out, right?"

He pretends the deep violet that flashes in Pete's eyes doesn't hurt him as well. 

"I-" Pete stops, visibly composing himself. "You... you just promised me. A week. I just want a week, Patrick, and I stand by that." he takes his hand off of Patrick's face from where it had slowly migrated to his cheek (Patrick tells himself the want to take Pete's hand and put it back where it was is just because he hasn't gotten laid in months) and sighs. "I just wanted a week. If you..." he pauses, blinking rapidly. "If you still... feel the same way about me then I'll... let you go."

Patrick opens his mouth dumbly, not even able to get any words out. He'd expected a lot of things; Pete's anger, his departure, harsh words spat at him, but none of that had happened. Instead, he'd gotten a broken Pete and that had been the last thing he'd wanted. 

Patrick's far from heartless, especially towards his soulmate, and he'd never intended to hurt him, but he'd done just that.

An apologies's at the tip of his tongue, but he bites it back, not even daring to voice it. He doubts Pete would even accept it, and however much it hurts him, Pete would just hurt him more in the long run so he might as well lash out first.

No matter if it goes against his very nature. No matter if his  _soul_ practically protests against hurting his mate. He needs to hurt Pete enough that he leaves.

But when he opens his mouth to say something, nothing comes out. He gapes blankly at Pete and realizes dully that somehow, he's already gotten attached enough to Pete he's physically incapable of hurting him that much.

_Great. Now how are you going to get him to leave?_

"I-" Patrick opens his mouth again, about to protest against that and kick Pete out for good, but then their eyes meet and Patrick sighs inwardly at Pete's pleading look. There's no way he can say no, now. 

"Okay," he says reluctantly. "Five more days, but no more."

Pete half-shrieks, half laughs and goes to hug Patrick. Halfway there, he stops, stepping back, and giving Patrick an awkward grin. "Yay," he mumbles, just as awkwardly. Patrick gives him a returning awkward smile, ignoring the stab in his heart and... _rejection_ he felt even though it's  _his_ fucking fault, not Pete's. 

Everything's his fault nowadays, it seems.

 

* * *

 

"So... where do you want to go today?" Pete asks quietly, not looking at Patrick. The blond tries not to wince, the pain put out by Pete affecting him enough he can't look at Pete either.

"I was thinking, um..." Patrick hesitates. "The... can we go to the recording studio again?"

Pete smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes, which are still faint purple and dark with a mix of other colors that make Patrick's heart hurt. "Yeah, sure," he answers, reaching out to grab hands with Patrick before seeming to realize what he's doing and snatching his hand back.

Patrick ignores the stab in his heart because it's  _his_ fault Pete's doing that, he needs to own up to his mistakes. Cautiously, he reaches out and takes Pete's hand himself, the timid smile he'd been sporting widening when Pete gives him a grin that instantly dispels the darkness in his eyes and replaces it with pink and white and brown. 

 

* * *

 

"Do you want to... sing again?" Pete asks quietly once they're there as he walks over to his bass and picks it up. "Or, just like, jam out or something?"

Patrick shrugs, slinging a guitar over his shoulder and strumming it cautiously. "I dunno, what do you want to do?"

"I, um..." Pete pauses, covering his face to try and hide his nervous blush. "I've written some stuff. Like, lyrics. They're not, um, very good, but-"

"Can..." Patrick stops, "Can I see them?" 

Pete looks over at him, vulnerable and uncertain and Patrick forces himself not to flinch because Pete's in pain, too; Patrick's not the only one hurting and yet he's still acting like his pain is the only thing that matters, not Pete's. 

It makes him hate himself even more. 

"Y-you want to see them?" 

Patrick nods. "Yeah, if you're okay with that."

Pete gives him a slightly nervous smile and leaves the room, coming back with a handful of papers. He gives them to his soulmate with the same nervous smile and as Patrick flips through them, half-smiling at the wrinkles and aggressive pen marks over the printer ink, he can practically sense Pete's eyes boring into him.

They're not bad, not at all, Patrick has to admit, even when he's just thinking analytically and not emotionally due to his... attachment to Pete. They're actually pretty good; some of them are really good. 

"Have you written any music to them?" he asks, looking up. 

Pete shifts nervously. "I'm bad at that whole writing song thing," he confesses. "I can write okay words but music, it's just no. But um. What do you think?"

"They're good," Patrick says quickly. "Some of them are actually really, really good."

Pete gives him a look. 

"I'm not lying, Pete. They're good. Certainly much better than any of the stuff I'm hearing nowadays."

"This better not be the soul bond thing talking," Pete laughs, running a hand through his hair and Patrick grins too.

"Nah, it's not. If it wasn't the soul bond thing talking when I sang according to you, then it's not talking right now I don't think." 

"Well, I wasn't lying."

"I wasn't, either."

"So I guess we're just both good at what we do," Pete announces, strumming his bass and giving Patrick a bright grin. "Hey, by the way, are you any good at writing music?"

 

* * *

 

"Hey Pete, what were you thinking for this line?"

Patrick's soulmate looks over from where he was playing some line on his bass and looking at a lyric, "Um, I was thinking, maybe a C7 chord descending chromatically downwards or something."

Patrick thinks for a moment, strumming it through and making a face at the end. "It sounds too stiff, I think. Maybe if we did..." he plays a different chord, "this instead..." 

 

* * *

 

"What's something not a lot of people know about you?"

The question catches Patrick off guard and he freezes. There's a lot of answers to that, really.  _Depression, wanting to kill myself, hating myself, hating my body..."_

Instead, he answers, "I have asthma." 

Pete's eyes widen. "You do? How bad is it?"

"Not very," Patrick reassures him quickly. "It's only bad if I run a lot or something. And I have an inhaler. So, um, I'm fine, don't worry."

"Like that's going to stop me," Pete mutters, and Patrick thinks the half-hug he let himself be pulled into was more for Pete's sake than his own. 

 

* * *

 

"Pete, what the hell?" 

Pete grins innocently up at Patrick, tightening his grip on him and gripping his ass. Patrick grimaces and looks away, not wanting to say anything to attract Pete's attention and resigning himself to silently bearing this. 

He knows, logically, that he shouldn't have this kind of reaction to someone- his  _soulmate-_ grabbing his butt as he hoists him in a bridal hold, but his brain has never been particularly logical, especially not lately. All he can feel now when someone touches him is  _fat, fat, you're such a fatass,_ and it poisons his entire brain until no matter what part of his body's being touched, he still gets that one insistent, niggling thought that plagues his brain and never,  _ever_ refuses to let go. 

But he keeps silent. He tenses up and bites his lip and looks away from Pete's all too knowing gaze, but he stays silent.

He has a feeling Pete doesn't need him too, though.

"Are you okay?" Pete asks and all Patrick can think is a little, smug,  _called it._

He nods. "Yeah," but it comes out all wrong which makes Pete's grip tighten over his ass and just progressively make it worse; Patrick tenser, and Pete more worried until he's sitting in the passenger seat and Pete's gazing at him with wide, concern-filled and maroon colored eyes and hands that are still reaching towards Patrick almost instinctively. 

"What's wrong?"

Patrick looks away. "Nothing."

He can see the disbelieving glance Pete sends his way.

"I just..." he hesitates, takes a deep breath, and stops. Pete sits down next to him on the cramped passengers's seat and turns him around gently. 

"You don't have to tell me," Pete says quietly. Patrick takes a deep breath and nods shakily. 

"Okay."

There's a pause, then Pete stands up and walks around, slides into the driver's seat and starts the car. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: Self harm, mentions of suicide, eating disorders, mentions of body dysmorphia disorder.

For all that Pete claims to be an insomniac, he sure sleeps like the dead once he's actually asleep. 

Patrick's really grateful, though, seeing as if he  _didn't_ sleep that soundly, he'd probably have woken up when Patrick slid out of his arms and fled to the bathroom. 

He's not even really quite certain why he's there, just that he needs to do something to stop the...the  _thoughts_ in his head and the bathroom's always been the best place to get them out, whether from kneeling at a toilet, retching, or sitting on it with blood on his thighs. 

It's not even like he's thinking about doing any of those things, just-

Yeah, he's lying. Of  _course_ he's thinking about doing them. It's just he's afraid Pete's gonna wake up, and then find him in the bathroom with his fingers down his throat or razor slitting his thighs open and he... he can't risk it. 

But he just can't get the  _thoughts,_ the stupid fucking laughter and  _worthless_ and  _fatass_ that never leave his head no matter how hard he tries. The only time it ever stops is when he's slitting his wrists or chest or thighs and even then, it's only for a second, but still...

Patrick thinks he'd kill for a few seconds of peace and quiet.

He eyes the razor.

It's not even like he'd be doing anything bad, is it? It's just a little bit of blood, it won't hurt anybody. 

Shakily, he picks it up, holding it over his thigh, takes a deep breath, and then presses down, hard, and drags it across his skin. The relief is instantaneous and enough that he nearly sighs through the pain. He's been waiting for days for this- three days, to be exact, ever since he met Pete- and now that he has it back... 

Patrick smiles grimly. He knows that there's no way he'll ever be able to give it up. 

 

* * *

 

An hour or so later, the sun is rising and Patrick carefully slips back into Pete's arms. The dude won't even know he was gone. 

His legs and chest are carefully bandaged, covered with two shirts and a crapton of bandages to help stop the sometimes involuntary flinch he gives if someone touches a cut. He knows he can't risk it around Pete, not with his spontaneous acts of affection that he doesn't do as often anymore but sometimes can't seem to help himself and does anyway.

So, he snuggles into Pete's arms and pretends the way his arms squish a little against Pete doesn't sicken himself so much he wants to throw up. And then he waits. 

 

* * *

 

 

It's almost 10 when Pete finally wakes up and Patrick's nearly bored out of his mind and considering just ripping out of the other man's embrace when the Pete stirs.

 _Thank God,_ Patrick thinks with something akin to an inward sigh of relief, waiting for Pete to move his arms so he can finally get out. When he does so, yawning, Patrick scoots out of the way as soon as he can and tries to fix his hair (it wouldn't do for Pete to notice he's losing hair, for whatever reason that is) and clothes, making a tiny disgusted face down at his too fat thighs.

"Mornin', Trick," Pete says sleepily, rubbing his eyes and looking over at Patrick. 

"It's almost 10."

"Still morning," he decides, giving the blond a grin. Patrick opens his mouth, about to argue, but rolls his eyes and gives up. It's almost impossible to change Pete's mind once he's decided something; that much he's learned already. 

Pete stands up, stretching, and looks over at Patrick with a hint of a smile on his face and in his eyes, before they turn grey/brown with confusion and his brow furrows. "Were you up before me?"

Patrick blinks. "Uh, yeah," he admits, knowing by now that Pete can see through his lies. "I woke up an hour or two before you."

"What'd you do?" he doesn't look suspicious, which is good; he must've not noticed that Patrick always only wears long, baggy clothes and pulls at his sleeves constantly (he's never regretted his teenage folly more; he should've known not to put them on his arms). 

Patrick shrugs. "Nothing, really. Watched the sun rise, I guess. I didn't really feel like moving."

Pete does look suspicious now, probably because it was just yesterday that the blond shrieked when Pete hugged him and tensed when his ass was grabbed- also by Pete- and now Patrick's okay with being in someone's arms for hours. "Really?"

Patrick keeps his eyes just low enough to make it hard for Pete to read them and lifts a shoulder. "Yeah, I was kinda tired," he says nonchalantly and thanks heaven his voice stays solid. 

He can tell Pete doesn't believe him but he also doesn't want to push the other man too hard, so the brown haired man just nods and walks in the direction of Patrick's kitchen. "Want anything for breakfast?"

Patrick freezes. Food is a huge no-no, at least until he can actually get his weight in control; he'd been able to hide his disgust of it from Pete for a couple days now, but he doubts it's going to be so easy now. 

_Dammit._

He considers for a moment.  _Say yes, put him off your scent. You don't have to eat all of it. You can purge later._

"Yeah, just a scrambled egg I think. And a banana." 

"Just one?" Pete turns around suddenly, looking worried. Patrick wonders why that set him off; does he think Patrick's so fat he's surprised Patrick can actually survive on that little food?

But his eyes don't look surprised or contemptuous. They look concerned and worried. He doesn't see the dirty mustard color that's contempt or the white-gray that's surprise. He just sees maroon and some vaguely grayish red that he guesses must be worry. 

"Yeah, I don't normally eat much for breakfast," he tells Pete. It's not even a lie. 

Pete's mouth twitches like he's about to say something but he just shrugs, mumbles an 'okay' and turns to go back to the kitchen.

 

* * *

 

 

It looks disgusting.

It looks absolutely _disgusting._

 _It_ is the scrambled egg, sitting innocently on Patrick's plate with a banana by its side. 

It's not a question of Pete's cooking (although that  _is_ pretty questionable); it's just that he hates food. Well. He loves it too much that he has to force himself to hate it. 

Gritting his teeth, Patrick picks up his fork and cuts into a piece of the egg, putting it in his mouth and swallowing both it and the rising bile that comes when he does so. 

"What's wrong?" 

Patrick lifts his head to see Pete staring at him intently, his own food forgotten for a moment by his side. 

"What do you mean?" he asks innocently, looking down to avoid Pete's gaze and starting to peel his banana. 

Pete lets out a half hiss, half growl that gives Patrick the feeling his avoidance attempt was not all that successful. "That's not going to work, Trick. I've done that too often to get sidetracked."

"Done what? I'm not trying to sidetrack you." 

Pete sighs. "Stop lying."

"I'm not lying." he looks up from his banana, realizing, too late, that Pete's his  _soulmate_ and can therefore read the lie in his eyes. 

"Yeah, sure you aren't."

Patrick looks away again. "It's nothing, I swear," he says instead. This time, his soulmate's reply is in the form of a chair sliding back and footsteps going around to him. 

"Trick," Pete says softly; something in his voice compels Patrick to look up. "Please. I know something's wrong. You've been acting cagey since yesterday." there's an unspoken ending of the sentence-  _when I picked you up and you flinched-_ but neither of them say anything about that. 

Honestly, even if he did say anything, Patrick doesn't even know where to start. There's so much on his mind, so much weighing him down that he doesn't know what he'd even say first;  _I still want to die? I cut myself today? Oh, by the way, I'm on a_ diet  _that requires me starving myself as much as I can on a daily basis? My parents were soulmates but that didn't stop my dad from abusing my mom? I kinda, sorta like you but I'm afraid you're going to turn into my dad?_

So yeah. There's quite a lot. 

"I'm always cagey," Patrick says instead. 

Pete closes his eyes and seems to hold back an exasperated sigh. "No shit, Sherlock."

"Fuck you, Watson." 

"But seriously, Trick," Pete says, the smile he'd had on after Patrick's response flickering off, "I just...I'm not asking you to tell me everything, but... _something?_ Just a little bit of information?"

Silence.

"I have synthesia."

Pete just stares at Patrick for a long, long moment. "What the fuck is that?"

Despite himself, the blond starts laughing. He doesn't know why, but he can't help it; he guesses maybe it's just Pete's  _face_ when he asked that, the confusion and  _what the fuck, Patrick_ he could practically  _see_ in his eyes combined with everything else that made him finally crack. After a couple seconds, Pete starts laughing, too.

When Patrick finally sobers, he finally answers, "It's... it's a mental disorder where one sense is basically mixed up with another. Well, not mixed up; it's sort of combined, so you could maybe smell sounds or hear shapes."

"What's yours?" Pete actually looks interested and Patrick's thrown off for a second; he'd expected him to get mad at Patrick for boring him, or something. 

"It's, um...I see sounds. As colors." 

Pete's eyes spark blue-gold and the other man is once again thrown off balance at the actual  _interest_ in his eyes;  _how_ does Pete find something as mundane and silly as that  _interesting?_

"That's so cool!" Pete exclaims, an excited smile turning his mouth up. "What does my voice look like?"

Patrick stares blankly at Pete for a moment, not processing the request for a moment. "I guess...green? Green-brownish." 

Pete nods, accepting the information. "What about your voice?"

He doesn't even have to think. "Black." 

 _"Black?"_ Pete looks kinda confused but he doesn't say anything else, just runs over to his phone, pulls up YouTube, and starts playing random songs for Patrick to listen to. 

And even though the blond rolls his eyes every single time, he can't help but feel warmth somewhere in his chest, for the first time in a long time. 

 

* * *

 

 

"So Patrick, what do you normally do with your days?" Pete's lying on his stomach in Patrick's bed, chin propped up with his hands as he idly watches Patrick tidy up his bedroom.

"Uh, not much really. I used to have a job but I..."  _got let go after my third suicide attempt_ "...quit." 

Pete makes a sound sort of like a hum and rolls onto his side when Patrick steps out of his line of vision to pick up some of the spare papers on his desk. He doesn't really mind Pete seeing his messy room, especially when he's seen Pete's far worse one, but it gives him something to do and also is a good excuse to not let Pete see his eyes and read him like he's all too fond of doing. 

"What did you do?" 

"I've had a couple, actually," Patrick says slowly. "The first one was when I was 18, at a Starbucks. They fired me after-"  _I slit my wrists_ "-I got a bunch of costumers complaints for being 'too sassy' or something like that." he laughs a little. "Can you believe that?"

"Yep," Pete replies, joining Patrick's laughter with his own, "Definitely."

Patrick gives him a glare but Pete just grins back until he's forced to give up with a roll of his eyes. "Anyways, my second was a few months later, when I was 19. I assisted the band director of a school with music arrangements and such. It was actually pretty fun."

"What happened?"

Patrick finishes with the desk and turns back around. This, at least, he doesn't have to lie about. "They didn't want me back for the next school year. Said they'd gotten a 'better job offer' or something, who knows." 

Pete makes a face. 

"My most recent one was at a nightclub, playing the piano in a jazz band. That one was great," he adds wistfully, realizing too late that he'd told Pete he'd quit it and then contradicted it by saying he liked it. He needed a good excuse, fast.

"Why'd you quit it then?"

Patrick huffs out a laugh. "Personal differences, I suppose." he goes over to the bed and plops down, trying not to make a face when he feels it give beneath his weight. Not nearly as much as it used to, of course, but still far too much. "How about you? Other than your college major, I don't know almost anything about you."

Pete gives Patrick an, in his opinion, far too soft smile, "'Course you do. You know my favorite color, how I look when I'm asleep, the way I like my breakfast food, what instrument I play- or try to- my nicknames for you..."

Patrick huffs. "But I don't know anything  _personal._ Anyone could know those things. I don't know anything a soulmate should know, or really any significant other should know about the other person."

Pete's eyes narrow. "The same could be said for you, Trick."

He stiffens, caught off guard. "I- uh- w-what do you want to know?" part of him already knows what Pete wants to know; part hopes he'll choose something different.

"I want to know everything about you," his soulmate answers, rolling over and sitting up so he can be level with Patrick. "What your parents were, or are, like. If you got bullied in high school, and if you were, how bad it was. Why you paused when you said you quit one job and got fired from another, and what actually happened. Or maybe why you're so fucking thin and you won't eat."

"I do eat!" Patrick protests, but he can't look into Pete's eyes and he knows his soulmate will see that as a victory. 

"I haven't seen you eat once in the days I've known you, until this morning and that was barely a bite."

Patrick blinks, heart racing frantically as he tries to think up a way to get Pete off his scent. 

He comes up blank.

"I- yes you have. You just don't remember."

Pete gives him a 'bullshit' look. 

"Seriously. I do eat. Just...I don't, don't like eating much when someone's watching me."  _there,_ Patrick thinks, sickeningly pleased with the lie.  _It's at least semi-plausible._ _  
_

Pete's eyes narrow but, instead of the cream Patrick's come to associate with disbelief and suspicion, he just sees confusion. He feels relieved. Pete's still just thick enough for his lies to work. But he can still tell he's running out of time. Just, hopefully, Pete doesn't find out before the week's up and stops Patrick from offing himself in peace. 

"Really?" 

Patrick nods, giving a silent thanks for his racing thoughts for making sure his eyes must be filled with so many colors they're completely unreadable. "Yeah. I just... feel like I'm a fish in a fishbowl or something. I don't like it." and that, at least, is true. He  _really_ doesn't like being watched while he's eating. 

Of course, he doesn't like eating in the first place. But you know. 

Pete nods slowly. The confusion is gone, replaced with understanding; Patrick's relieved his lie, once again, worked. "I can just make you food and let you eat it alone, then?"

Bile rises in his throat just at the mere mention of food but Patrick nods anyway.  _Anything to keep him off your scent, Patty._

He smiles, nods again, already planning new ways to dispense of it without eating. "Yeah, sure." 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a side note, the Patrick in this story, even though he's only 21, is basically Soul Punk Patrick with blond hair and generally does not have a hat. He's also really, really, unhealthily thin, although I probably didn't have to say that; you could probably guess from the story.


	6. Hypothetical Solutions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: troubled thoughts and the self-esteem to match (what a catch). Basically, referenced self harm, eating disorders, etc.

It's day 5. 

He only has to survive two more days, and he's free. 

Yesterday was living hell, what with Pete's constant mothering and fussing over his  _health_ and  _eating habits_ and a million other things (if a 'normal' person is supposed to eat three times a day, then, well, Patrick does  _not_ want to be normal), and today doesn't promise to be much better. He stiffens, hearing Pete's voice calling him to come get breakfast (probably some exceedingly extravagant affair with over 1,000 calories). 

Yeah, today  _definitely_  isn't going to be any better.

"Give me a minute!" Patrick yells back, frowning when his voice comes out hoarse and shaky. He refuses to admit that it might be because he hasn't eaten properly in over a week, instead blaming it- like he does virtually everything- on his weight while struggling to get himself out of bed. 

He's discovered that there's a careful science to doing so- to doing everything, really, when starving yourself- and that it is to do everything slowly, both for your low energy and to make sure you don't faint if you stand up quickly.

First, you raise your head, then you prop yourself up on your elbows, and slowly start to sit up. Once that's accomplished, you roll over to the side of the bed and put your feet down, wait a little for your vision to clear, and stand up slowly while holding onto the bed-frame. Once you're up, you wait for your vision to clear again and then you can begin walking. 

It's quite simple, really, especially once you're used to it and when it's combined with the knowledge that, if you didn't do it, you'd faint every time you tried to stand up (he's learned that the hard way); the only problem, of course, is that if your soulmate sees you while you're getting up...

Well, let's just say that the game might be up if that happens. Which is why Patrick never lies down or slouches, because the energy it takes to pick himself back up is much more than what it takes to keep himself up. 

Basically, it takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart. He's learned that the hard way, too. 

"Patrick! Get your cute little ass in here, pronto!" 

_Cute little ass? You're delusional, Wentz._

"I'm coming!" He starts in there, pausing at the halfway point to recover his breath and attempt to compose himself, since Pete's way too good at using their soulmate bond to read him, eventually managing to start walking again and this time making it all the way into his kitchen.

"Thank God," Pete greets him, "I was about to go see what was taking you so long. You okay?" He peers pointedly into Patrick's eyes and raises an eyebrow. 

"Yeah, 'm fine," the blond responds easily, even though it's a blatant lie and he's pretty sure Pete knows that, too. 

The latter gives him a skeptical look with matching eye-color but doesn't say anything, like usual, which is good; Patrick was counting on that. 

"So, what's for breakfast?" he asks as easily as he can manage, pulling out a chair and sinking gratefully down onto it once it's out. Pete's eyes change color, going from cream to the teal Patrick's learned is pleading, and he shifts his weight onto his other foot, both of which does  _not_ make Patrick's foreboding decrease by any measure. 

"Pancakes," he starts, either not noticing or not caring when Patrick's stomach just about sinks through the floor and he gapes at Pete in muted horror, "Eggs, bacon, all that good stuff."

"Okay," the blond answers as calmly as he can manage- which, to be fair, is actually pretty damn calm. Pete strides over to the counter and grabs two plates, setting one down at Patrick's spot. 

"You want me to leave, right?" he asks, like he's done at every other meal since their... _talk..._ two or so days ago- was it two days ago? Was it only yesterday? He can't remember.

"Yeah," Patrick responds and keeps his gaze carefully fixed somewhere between the floor and Pete's eyes that's also not Pete's crotch (been there, done that accidentally and the hour or more of teasing afterwards is  _really_ not worth it). Pete nods and walks out with his plate, leaving Patrick alone in the kitchen.

 _You know, Pete's gonna eat quickly just so he can get back to_ check up  _on you,_ his mind chides him.  _If you're going to get rid of that, you need to do it quickly._

He stands up slowly with his food in one hand.  _And don't put it in the trash can, idiot. He's probably going to check there._

He starts towards the sink.  _The eggs might go, but the rest of it isn't going to go down, stupid. You need to find a better solution._ Patrick looks down, grabbing his head with his free hand.  _Think!_

 _I could put the bacon back in the pan?_ He shakes his head.  _Pete would notice. There's no use getting him more uptight than he already is, or, worse, making me eat it all in front of him._

Patrick sighs. There's no good way to dispose of food, not without the risk of getting caught. He just needs to get rid of as much as he can and make it look believable. So, he ambles over to the sink and disposes of the eggs as silently as possible, then buries two pancakes and a strip of bacon in the (thankfully half-full) trashcan, reigning in his disgust as he sifts through the trash and puts the food down under the top layer. Once that's accomplished, he sits back down at the table and forces himself to take a bite of the remaining pancake, just as Pete bounces into the room.

"Good," is the brown-haired man's greeting. "You're eating."

"I told you I eat," Patrick tells him, chewing the pancake and trying to shove down the rising bile as he does so. 

"Mhm." Pete doesn't sound overly convinced, but Patrick knows him by now; he's not going to push the issue, not right now. Maybe later, maybe if he knew Patrick better than their five day acquaintance calls for, but not now. 

"What's up for today?" Patrick asks casually after a moment of silence and swallows the pancake. He really,  _really_ hopes it's going to be some low-energy activity like Netflix, or a movie, or, or sleeping or something, but he has a bad feeling Pete's going to say something like hiking and then watch as Patrick faints within the first mile and rolls off the side of a mountain or something. 

Pete turns to look at him, sauntering closer with a sway in his hips and a smirk on his lips. "I was thinking, Netflix and chill," he tells Patrick, except somehow he's moved close enough to Patrick within that sentence that he's saying it into the blond's neck. 

Patrick shivers despite himself. "S-sure," he half stammers. "Why not?" 

 

* * *

 

The whole 'and chill' part of it, thank God, turns out to be just sitting side-by-side on a sofa, as far away from Pete as possible without drawing attention; Patrick knows there's absolutely no way he'd be able to handle anything else, especially not now.Oh, and the Netflix? This weird show with two brothers trying to find their dad while brutally killing almost everything they come across.

Yep, he's talking about Supernatural.

"What do you find even remotely interesting about this?" Patrick complains after about the 7th episode. "All they're doing is killing stuff."

"Exactly," Pete tells him with a grin, shifting closer to the blond. He shifts back away carefully. "The killing stuff is what makes it interesting."

Patrick sighs, knowing better than to try and fight with Pete because, if there's one thing he's learned in his time with Pete, it's that it's almost impossible to fight with him on something and come out the winner. "I find it extremely repetitive, to be honest," he mutters as the shaggy one- Sam, he thinks it is? Goes to stab a werewolf or something and ends up almost dying. "All they're doing is-" Dean stabs the monster through the back- "Dying. Repeatedly."

Pete nods absently, not responding for a while. "Yeah, I heard this show has a whole  _lot_ of dying." As he says it, a man keels over, choking, maggots coming out of his mouth (God, does Patrick hate those witches). 

Patrick groans and rests his head against the back of the couch. 

 

* * *

 

_Seriously?_

He honestly needs to stop falling asleep like this. Pete's gonna wake up before him one day and realize just how fat he is when he can't move Patrick off of him. 

Patrick looks around, grabbing Pete's phone up from off of the floor and turning it on to check the time. 

6:48 P.M. He groans softly. So he and Pete have probably been asleep for at least two hours. It's a miracle neither of them have woken up before now; this is gonna completely screw both of their sleep schedules. 

"Pete," Patrick hisses, before aborting it. He needs to get out of Pete's arms first,  _before_ he wakes the dark-haired man up. The only problem is, of course, that Pete's grip is tight enough that he can feel it vaguely squishing against the fat of his stomach and sides and  _fuck,_ now he wants to throw up. 

Fucking awesome.

He needs to get out of here, and  _fast._ He doesn't want to throw up on his only sofa, thank you very much. _  
_

_"Pete!"_ he tries again, louder this time. If he's fast enough, Pete won't even register how much fat he has on his body, maybe will even drop off back to sleep. 

The older man shifts his hold on Patrick, and, relieved, he goes to sit up, accidentally shoving his ass into Pete's crotch in the process. 

He freezes. 

Pete's grip changes, tightening instead of loosening like Patrick had hoped and head coming to rest on the blond's shoulder, who breathes a sigh of relief. Good. At least his awkward butt-thrust hadn't woken his soulmate up to the discovery that 1. His soulmate is a fat-ass and 2. Well, his soulmate is  _really_ a fat-ass. Now he just needs to find another way to get out of Pete's ar-

Wait. Was tha- is Pete's...? 

He sighs.Pete's dick is literally poking him in the ass now.  _Great._  

Now, if it had just been the whole dick thing, Patrick would've been okay with it. Really. But Pete, apparently not content with doing things half-way even in his sleep, Pete  _of course_ apparently decides to slide his hands around Patrick's waist, bury his face in Patrick's sweatshirt, and begin rolling his hips up against the younger man's ass. 

 _Fan-fucking-tastic,_ Patrick thinks sarcastically.  _Pete's having a fucking wet dream_. He's annoyed enough that he doesn't even feel the usual panic that he's being touched; that, he supposes, and of course the fact that Pete's fucking  _asleep._

Oh, and as if that's not bad enough, then Pete starts  _moaning._ And not just that, tiny little whimpers and noises and then  _'Fuck, Patrick,_ fuck' and okay, he's gonna be honest. It'd be kinda hot if, you know, Pete was actually awake.  _  
_

Okay, okay. It'd be  _really_ hot. In fact, he's kinda, sorta...aroused. For the first time in a long time. 

There's a moment, an instant when he wants to turn around, wake Pete up and kiss him, hard, but he stops it by digging his nails into his scabbed-up thighs. 

 _No,_ he spits at himself.  _You are_ not  _going to do that. You are_ not  _going to let yourself become that vulnerable. Vulnerability just leads to pain in the end, when people learn your weak spots and exploit them._

He takes a deep breath and lets it out, slowly, trying to think of anything else other than Pete, how his hands are still clinging to Patrick in a way that's now rapidly becoming more and more nauseating, how his hips are still grinding against Patrick's ass. He needs to get out of there, fast, he knows that, can tell with how his fleeting arousal is rapidly fading to be replaced with nausea, but if he wakes Pete up, the older man's gonna know something's off and Patrick doesn't want to risk that. 

So he grits his teeth against the rising bile in his throat and sits up carefully, plying Pete's hands off his sides and putting a pillow in his arms instead, then gratefully rolls off the couch and heads towards the bathroom.

When he gets there, he doesn't even have to stick his fingers down his throat, it just comes, bitter and acidic and watery, the only thing really coming up being his stomach acid. He's almost grateful he hasn't eaten anything other than that pancake in the past few days, really; it minimizes the smell and volume of the vomit and makes it harder to detect. Something that's gonna be really nice when Pete wakes up. 

Speaking of Pete...

Should he go back to the couch, lay back down, and pretend none of that ever happened? Or should he stay away and tell Pete he simply woke up before he did? 

He looks down, eyes the knife he keeps in there. 

Yeah, he doesn't think he's going to be going back to Pete anytime soon. 

 

* * *

 

Pete wakes up less than an hour later, right as Patrick's layering the last bandage on over his thighs and pulling his pants back up. Or at least, he chooses until then to speak up.

"Hey, 'Trick?" his voice comes from the living room.

Patrick sighs, standing and zipping his fly up. "What is it, Pete?" 

"What do you want for dinner?" 

He stiffens. "Why?"

"I was thinking about ordering pizza," Pete calls back from the other room as Patrick starts back in. His voice sounds a little off, and Patrick would normally disregard it except Pete's his  _soulmate_ and the bond is now strong enough he can almost sense Pete's emotions (the fact that that means Pete must be able to do the same to Patrick terrifies him and he just tries his best to ignore that) and he knows something's off. 

"Sure, do what you want," he tells Pete as casually as he can as he enters the room. "I don't care."

"Because you're just gonna dump the food in the trashcan after you're done with it?" Pete questions with a hard edge in his voice as he stands up and turns to face Patrick. 

Patrick freezes for an instant. It's an instant too long because Pete just sighs, the victory Patrick had half expected to be in his expression strangely absent. "Look, 'Trick. I know you have a problem and that's oka-"

"I don't have a problem!" Patrick explodes. Surprisingly, Pete's eyes don't flare up with the same anger he knows must be in his eyes and just stay light blue and pained. 

"Yes, 'Trick, you kinda do," he says quietly. 

"I  _don't,"_ he insists, growing angrier. "I don't fucking have a problem and if you want to think that then  _fuck you!_ Fuck you for saving me in the first place! You should know not to fucking try and save someone who doesn't want to be alive!" 

Pete's eyes darken instantly in hurt but he stays quiet. 

"So stop trying to control me!" Patrick is saying by the time Pete's apparently gotten control of himself as his eyes flash almost red. "If you want to do that, go find someone else that's  _not_ me to go do it!" 

Pete takes a breath. "Since when is trying to get you to eat controlling you?"

Patrick glares at him, opening his mouth to say something he's sure is going to be sharp and caustic, but at the last second he just ducks his head and goes silent. If he says anything else, he knows it's going to be something other than angry, going to reveal too much, and Patrick already knows the high cost of being vulnerable. 

Then there's a set of arms around him and for a moment, the cold and darkness are chased away by warmth and Pete's voice in his ear murmuring something unintelligible but soothing.

Maybe he can allow himself to be vulnerable just this once, Patrick thinks. 

Maybe.

 

* * *

 

Patrick's pretty sure he's done being vulnerable when he wakes up the next morning in his  _bed,_ with Pete's arms around him, quite literally spooning him. 

Because... _seriously?_

He knows by now, of course, that Pete is, quite possibly, the world's biggest cuddle slut, but come  _on._ They've known each other for what, six days? They might be soulmates, but that doesn't fucking mean he wants to wake up with someone pressed against his (fat) ass, nuzzling his (fat) shoulder with their arms around his (fucking  _fat)_ waist. 

Without a second's thought, he kicks backwards, hard, dislodging Pete's grip instantly as the older man lets out a cry of pain (probably a pretty terrible wake-up call, but it'll teach him not to touch Patrick like that, he thinks). Then he's off, leaping out of bed and bolting to the bathroom. 

_No. No no no no no no-_

_Calm down,_ he instructs himself.  _You're not gonna full-out panic now because he was grabbing your hips. He's done that before, hasn't he? There's no reason it should only be freaking you out now._

Except now, it's become less of a platonic, mindless, I-need-a-pillow-and-you're-comfy thing and more...intimate, almost. 

And if there's one thing Patrick doesn't do, it's intimacy. Well. And he doesn't eat, either. 

Both of which Pete seems very adamant to force upon him, annoyingly enough. 

"Patrick?" 

Pete's using his full name, for once, something Patrick's learned is never good. 

"Patrick, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Pete sighs. "I'm calling bullshit and I'm can't even see you, dude. Come on, Patrick. It's not like you to do that."

"How would you know?" he shoots back almost viciously, glaring at his reflection in the mirror. 

"Because I know you," Pete responds patiently. 

"You met me six days ago." 

He can  _hear_ Pete's shrug from outside the door. "Doesn't matter. I know you far better than I've ever known anyone, even after only six days."

"You don't know me."

"I beg to differ." 

"You  _don't_ know me," Patrick repeats, his voice cracking. "You  _don't."_

"Why is that such a bad thing?" Pete's closer now, almost touching the door and Patrick tries not to think about opening it. He doesn't want to see the disappointment in Pete's eyes. "What are you afraid of telling me, huh? What is it?"

Patrick stays silent. Glares at his reflection for a second. "Everything, Pete." 

He hears the door handle turn and then Pete's there, inches away from him and eyes a nebula of colors he's not even going to try to figure out. "You don't have to tell me everything all at once," he says softly. "I'm not asking you to do that. I just want to know you, however much I can get at a time."

"But I don't  _want_ to tell you  _anything,_ Pete, don't you get it?"

He scoffs lightly. "Of course I do. There's a reason I haven't told you much, either. But the thing is, we've got to tell someone someday, or-" _  
_

"Or what?" Patrick interrupts, eyes scathing and a bit orange. "I've lived with all this stuff for 21 years and I'm fine."

Pete gives him a look.

"I am!" 

He just keeps staring, his eyes that wonderful shade of sarcastic incredulity Patrick's really come to hate within the last few days. 

"Well," he concedes, "Mostly, anyways." 

"Mhm," Pete says, giving him an 'I'm right, you're wrong' look that Patrick should honestly find at least a little bit more annoying than he does. "Look, 'Trick," and his eyes soften, turning this weird almost-gold shade that Patrick's afraid to read, "I've only known you for six days-" Patrick opens his mouth and Pete waves him down- "Let me finish. I've only known you for six days but honestly, Patrick, I don't think there's anything you can tell me that would turn me away from you." 

"What if I murdered a man?"

"I'm sure you would've have good reason."

"Got raped?"

"Why the fuck would that be a turn-off? It'd be their fucking fault, not yours."

Patrick takes a deep breath. "What if, hypothetically...I...hurt myself?"

Pete gasps.


	7. Put Another X On the Calendar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, TW for suicide stuff. Not mentioning any details, but if anything about that triggers you, I beg of you please don't read this.

"No- no, Patrick, you didn't-" 

"I..." 

He wants to lie, desperately. And not to save himself; to protect Pete. He's not sure if that's selfless or more selfish than anything he's ever done in his life. 

But he needs to face it. They're soulmates. Pete  _knows_ when he's lying. He was an idiot to even  _hypothetically_ state that, knowing as he did how his eyes make his entire soul transparent when Pete's looking at them. 

Why  _did_ he say that? It's not like he  _wants_ Pete to know how broken he is, is it? 

Is it?

Pete's in front of him, eyes wet and shattered blue and purple like prisms that catch the light. "'Trick," he whispers desperately. "'Trick, tell me that's just hypothetical. Tell me that's not true."

His breath hitches. "I-"

"'Trick.  _Please."_

"Pete," he stutters out somehow, "I'm sorry. I can't." 

Pete half sobs, half makes some weird strangled sound and launches himself into Patrick's arms, grabbing him tightly and trying to stifle what Patrick realizes, to his horror, must be tears, going by the wet patch growing on his shirt. 

"Pete-" he awkwardly pats the older male's head, not sure how to deal with this. He hasn't really touched someone, let alone comforted someone, for years, and sorry, but he's kinda rusty. "Pete, it's okay," he murmurs, hugging Pete back even though he knows both of them know it's anything but  _okay._ "It's okay."

There's a long sniffle, then silence, and finally Pete's head lifts from Patrick's shoulder to look at him. "Patrick...I..." he pauses. 

"I know."

"No, I- I want you to know I don't- don't think any less of you." 

Silence.

"And...I had my suspicions before this. You just confirmed them." 

_Of course he did._

Patrick was an idiot for thinking he could ever fool his soulmate. He just hopes that, about other things at least, he's kept Pete much further hidden in the dark. 

"Shh, Pete," Patrick just says, leading Pete back to his room and sitting them down on his bed. "Calm down. It's okay." 

Which was a fucking lie because  _nothing's_ okay anymore, not now that Pete's found out. But if there's one thing Patrick's good at...it's lying.

So that's what he's gonna do. 

 

* * *

 

"Hey 'Trick, what's wrong?"

Patrick smiles. "Nothing," he says sweetly, blinking just fast enough to make it hard for Pete to focus on his eyes. "I'm fine."

 

* * *

 

"'Trick, seriously, you can tell me."

Patrick looks away from the TV screen to look at Pete's face, meeting his eyes for the first time in hours (he's not sure if it's a sign of maturity or immaturity that Pete hasn't really brought it up yet).

"Tell you what? I'm fine."

 

* * *

 

It's day 7, the last day Patrick promised Pete he'd stay around. Come tomorrow, he's finally going to be free to off himself however he wants.

Except...does he really want to?

He knows he did on day one. Two, three, and four, too. Five was a bit iffy and six kinda stuttered, and now it's seven and Patrick's not even sure he's going to take that jump.

Don't get him wrong; he still wants to die. It's just...he's not sure he wants to die  _that_ much. Enough to never see Pete again. 

Patrick sighs, covering his head in his hands. The aforementioned dude shifts in his sleep next to Patrick, murmuring something that sounds like Trick and maybe a murmured I lo-

He's not going to think about that. 

No, he's not going to think about that, not when he can be thinking about the coming day's lies and the way he's going to get away to finally end it. Not when he can be thinking of skipped meals and brittle bones and fat that never quite falls off. Not when he can stare at his carefully covered thighs and think about the marks beneath them that Pete knows nothing about, theoretically- he doesn't know where Patrick cuts, after all. 

At the end of the day, really, everything just melts down to one thing- Patrick might be falling for Pete, but that doesn't mean anything. The fledgling, fragile flame of something he's hesitant to even call love can never hope to defeat everything else, all his insecurity and self-hatred and the scars in his too-skinny limbs (he knows there's too little fat, of course he knows, it's just that it's never _little enough)._ _  
_

He takes a deep breath, holds it for a second and looses it. He wonders if Pete will be surprised when Patrick leaves. Probably not, not with how the blond's acted this entire week. He almost, for a second, wonders if Pete will care when he finds out what Patrick's gonna do once the week's up, before he shoves the thought away. He doesn't need images of a disheveled, horrified Pete pleading him to step off the edge. No. If he does this, he's gonna make sure Pete knows nothing. Best to keep him as far out of this as he can.

Although Pete's managed to get himself tangled into Patrick's affairs already, despite the younger man's best efforts. He just decides he's going to blame it on the soulmates and the bond that's probably almost complete by no-

_Wait._

_The soul bond's almost complete. Shit._

He springs up from his bed, not even sparing a thought for the still asleep Pete.  _Shit shit shit this is bad this is very bad._ Soul bonds are designed to bring the two people together, make them closer emotionally than is normally humanly possible. Basically, the two mates are separate pieces, designed to fit together when placed correctly, and the bond is the thing that cements it.

The same bond that is set off by the first intentional contact between the two mates. The same bond that takes, if Patrick remembers correctly, around a week to complete. 

_Shit._

It's not just that the two mates are supposed to be closer emotionally; when the bond's completed, not only do the two mates tend to be able to sympathize and communicate with each other better, Patrick's also heard that- in some rare cases- not only can you read your mate's eye color, you can sense their emotions even when apart. Not very well, of course, but enough that, if you concentrate hard, you can get a vague sensation of what they're feeling at the moment.

And also, once the bond's complete, if one of the two soulmates happens to die, the loss is unbearable. Far worse than it might've been if the bond hadn't finished. 

Patrick breathes deeply, forcing his hands to unclench from the bathroom sink he finds himself in front of. He doesn't want Pete to suffer through that- he  _can't._ He  _can't_ put his soulmate through that much pain. It'll be hard enough even to put him through this much.

_Then why do it? You're only hurting the people you care about!_

_Person,_ Patrick retorts.  _And it's for the better of both of us._

There's a scoff from a voice inside his head.  _Mhm. And how, exactly, is your death helpful to this situation?_

_Well, for one, it'll make sure the same thing that happened to my mom will never happen to me. Or to Pete. And I won't be burdening Pete anymore. He'd just grow tired of me, anyways._

There's no response from the voice and Patrick takes that as a silent victory, straightening and taking another deep, measured breath. 

He's got to do this, fast. Before the bond completes and he leaves a devastated Pete in his wake. Because he knows that, now, Pete probably doesn't care about him that much- who  _could,_ really- but once they're bonded, neither of them is really going to have a choice whether or not they care for each other (at least, that's how he's always heard it). 

Unless, of course, the bond gets twisted. Like how it did with his parents. 

There's a soft thump and then a sleepy groan from the other room; Patrick has no idea whether Pete's having another wet dream or just rolled off the bed and landed on the floor. He decides he doesn't really want to know. 

He heads towards the front door, grabbing his jacket on the way out. He needs to end this. Now. 

 

* * *

 

When he steps out of the door, already flagging down a taxi, he's rapidly putting together a plan. He needs to do something that will actually get him for good this time, with no possibility of coming back, and he needs to be able to do it fast, before Pete wakes up and panics.

"Where to?" the driver asks.

He closes his eyes and thinks for a moment.

_Of course. That's the obvious place._

"You know the park a couple blocks away?"

"Yeah, man, course I do. It's pretty popular with the people round here." He has brown eyes, Patrick notices vaguely, and brown hair. Just like Pete. Never mind he has lighter skin and no visible tattoos Patrick can see and a defined jawline- oh, and a huge forehead. In his current state, it apparently doesn't take much to set him off, and even the smallest characteristic is reminding him of Pete. Of his soulmate.

"Hey, you alright?" the driver is reaching a hand out as he says it and Patrick realizes he must've zoned out.

"Yeah, fine," he mutters, sliding into the car. "Just..."

"Relationship issues?"

Patrick's head snaps up. "What?"

The driver shrugs, turning back to the wheel and starting the car up. "You just seemed kinda weirded out when you saw me. Like I reminded you of someone you didn't want to think about but couldn't help thinking about anyway."

"I-" he stops. "What's your name?"

"Brendon Urie," the other man responds without looking around but while making an exaggerated flourish with one hand. "Sorry if what I said was, you know, weird or whatever. I've just had relationship...stuff...before. I know the look."

"Oh," Patrick says, helpfully. "Soulmate?"

Brendon's shoulders stiffen and Patrick knows he must've hit a nerve. "Yeah," he says in a tone like he really doesn't want to be having this conversation. "We...we're not together anymore. Our differences were too...different."

Patrick opens his mouth, not sure what he should say. Thankfully, Brendon keeps talking. "He's...he's a, an addict, you know? Drugs. And I think, recently, alcohol. At first, I thought, maybe I'd be able to help him. Maybe our whole soulmates thing would allow me to get through to him in a way no one else could." he breaks off to laugh bitterly as he pulls to a stop at a traffic light. "I've never been more wrong in my life."

Patrick remains silent, staring at his clenched hands sitting in his lap. Is Pete, even now, thinking the same thing about him? Has he already given up the same way Brendon's given up on his soulmate?

He was right. He should definitely be offing himself right now.

"Hey, I'm sorry, did I say something wrong?" Brendon's looking back at him again, eyes filled with concern that, for once, he can't read by color.

"No, it's just...I just..." Patrick trails off, shaking his head.

"What?" a car honks behind them and Brendon turns his attention back to the road but Patrick knows he's still waiting for an answer. 

"I...maybe he just thought you didn't care."

"He thought I didn't _what?"_

"Care," Patrick says quietly, regretting saying anything. "Maybe he thought that, if he made one wrong move, you'd leave. That you didn't care enough to stay, to help him get better."

There's a second of silence. Then Brendon finally speaks again, sounding small and vulnerable. "Then I just proved him right."

"There could still be time," Patrick says urgently as Brendon pulls up to the park and stops the taxi. "You might still be able to help him." he opens the door and steps out, locking eyes with Brendon. "Please. Do it for me. It's too late for me but it doesn't have to be for you."

Brendon gapes at him, confusion and concern warring in his gaze. Patrick sees him debate asking him why it's too late, maybe what he's going to do, but instead he just nods. "Okay," he says quietly. "I'll do that." he starts to roll the window up but Patrick stops him.

"One last thing; what's his name?"

"My soulmate?"

Patrick nods.

For the first time, a small smile crosses Brendon's face. "Ryan," he says softly. "His name's Ryan."

"Go to Ryan," Patrick tells him. "If he's not okay, which he won't be, help him become okay. Tell him you'll never leave him, and don't. Please. I'm begging you." _Please give him what I can never have._

Brendon nods slowly. "Okay. I will." 

And then he rolls his window up and drives off, leaving Patrick standing alone in the park, just a few hundred yards away from the one thing he'd come for.

Taking a deep breath, he turns around to face the bridge and takes a step towards it. 

 

* * *

 

 

He's barely a foot away from the bridge when it happens. 

It's not pain, exactly; rather, it's a sensation so intense he can't concentrate, can barely think, barely breathe and is forced to his knees, holding his head between his hands. All he can think is  _Pete, Pete help me Pete I need you_ and as the overwhelming sensation begins to fade, he realizes what must be happening. 

The soul bond's finalizing. 

And then his senses begin to return to him, except there's a difference. One tiny, little difference.

He can feel Pete's mind next to his. 

_What the fucking_ hell? 

_Wow, no need to sound so happy about this,_ a snarky voice responds. Pete. 

_You knew this would happen all along! You and your stupid major!_

There's something much like a shrug.  _Guilty. But, we shouldn't be able to communicate like this. I've never heard of soulmates being able to do that. At least not this early._

_'Not this early'?_

_Well, I mean, soul bonds are known to slowly strengthen over time if the soulmates have a good relationship and weaken if it's abusive or if they don't see each other anymore. But that we have fucking_ telepathy  _is unheard of. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't last longer than a few minutes before we're unable to use it for several days._

Patrick sighs. Isn't this just wonderful.  _Well aren't you the expert._

_I_ did  _happen to get a bachelor's in Soulmate Psych._

He groans.  _Now_ how is he going to manage to off himself?

He feels Pete's mental gaze sharpen.  _What was that?_

Silence. 

_Patrick, what was that?_

_You tell me,_ he responds a bit childishly. 

There's an exasperated heave of breath, or at least the emotional equivalent of one.  _I'm asking because I_ don't know.  _I can't really read your mind or sense anything other than vague emotions. I just know something's off._ _  
_

There's a pause. 

_Not that there's ever a moment when that's_ not  _the case with you._

Patrick takes another step towards the bridge and pretends Pete's words didn't hurt. 

_I'm sorry, man. That was kinda out of line._

_Just a bit,_ Patrick retorts, leaning over the edge.  _Should I really do this?_

_Do what?_ Pete's response is instant and almost afraid and Patrick curses.  _Stop reading my mind!_

_I'm not,_ Pete protests.  _I'm just reading what you're sending me. Now_ what  _are you planning on doing?_

Patrick remains silent.

_Patrick. What. Are. You. Doing._

He loops one leg over the railing and braces his arms against it. 

_Patrick! Where are you?_

The other leg, and now his arms are the only thing keeping him from the at  _least_ 50 foot drop. He's read that from this height, the water's basically like concrete. And hitting concrete from 50 feet up is not exactly good news. 

Patrick!  _Where are you!?_

He takes a deep breath. He guesses he's going to do this. Really, actually do this.

_Goodbye, Pete._

He lets one hand go, then looks down. He can't deny the thought of finally dying, for real, isn't terrifying. But it's the right thing to do. If he doesn't do this, the same thing that happened to Brendon and Ryan, the same thing that happened to his parents, is going to happen to him and he won't-  _can't-_ let that happen. 

_Patrick, no!_ Patrick doesn't even need to see Pete to feel the current of raw terror that sweeps him up, terror mixed with concern and pain and so many other emotions he doesn't even want to try to decipher them.  _Just hold on, okay? I'm coming to get you._

He loosens his grip on the railing. One fragile hand holding him between life and death. It's strangely poetic, and Patrick's never been a poetic soul. Pete must be rubbing off on him. 

_Pete, you know this would never have worked out. You were going to get tired of me one day._

_Are you fucking kidding me!? Of course not! I'm not about to fucking get_ tired  _of you! Now get yourself off that fucking bridge!_

Patrick freezes, inadvertently tightening his grip on the rail.  _How do you know where I am?_

_I'm not an idiot, 'Trick, I know where'd you go if you wanted to kill yourself. It's logical._

_I thought you didn't like logic, Pete._

_What can I say? You invoke new feelings in me. Now get the fuck off that bridge. And don't you dare do it by letting go._

_Pete, I- I can't._

Pete grits his teeth.  _Of course you can. I'll be there soon._

_I can't- I'm losing my grip. Pete, I can't hold on any longer._

Not technically a lie; he's just conveniently emitting the fact that he doesn't  _want_ to hold on any longer. It doesn't matter what Pete might say; he  _needs_ to do this. Now. 

The response Patrick was expecting doesn't come through their telepathic link; instead it comes in the form of a distant, hoarse shout of  _Patrick!_

_Shit._

"Patrick!" Pete comes into view, panting and running faster than Patrick thinks he's ever seen someone run in his life. "Patrick, don't you dare let go!" 

Patrick takes one last deep breath. 

_In and out, one last time._

"I'm sorry," he whispers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	8. The End. (Or is it?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit shorter than usual, so sorry about that, but I figured you'd rather have a shorter chapter sooner than waiting an extra couple days for a longer one. Was I wrong?  
> TW: Eating disorders, purging, attempted suicide, mentions of abuse.

_"Patrick!" Pete comes into view, panting and running faster than Patrick thinks he's ever seen someone run in his life. "Patrick, don't you dare let go!"_

_Patrick takes one last deep breath._

_In and out, one last time._

_"I'm sorry," he whispers._

 

* * *

 

 

Before he can fall more than a half of an inch, there's a solid grip on his forearm and he's being pulled up against his will.

"Sorry, dude, your soulmate needs you as much as I need Ryan." 

Patrick doesn't even need to look up to see who it is. "Brendon." 

He can  _feel_ the cheeky smirk. "Guilty as charged." 

"Why are you here?" Pete's almost to them by now, but, to be honest, he could do without facing the inevitable fury of his soulmate for a bit. 

"Pete flagged me down, told me to go to the park. I told him he was the second person within 10 minutes and he told me what you were going to do, so I broke a couple traffic laws to get him here as soon as I could and-"

Whatever he was going to say gets interrupted as Pete comes barreling through, tackling Patrick and practically crushing his much too fragile body, holding him so tightly Patrick thinks he might be  _trying_ to kill him. 

"Pete-" he starts, before stopping himself. What would he even say, anyway? 

"Patrick," Pete mumbles into his shoulder, "Patrick, I thought I was gonna lose you. I  _can't_ lose you, Patrick, I  _can't."_ And then, quietly enough that only the two of them can hear it, "Please don't leave me." 

He stays silent, even when Pete keeps murmuring  _please don't leave me_ over and over again until it almost becomes intelligible, even when those quiet words turn into sobs and Pete's arms loosen, even when Brendon leaves with a quiet 'call me later' and a piece of paper he places next to them. 

Then, he finally, finally speaks, just two quiet words that he tries desperately to hide behind and fails. "I'm sorry." 

 

* * *

 

He's too numb to feel, to  _think,_ even when Pete is leading him home, hailing a taxi (thankfully not Brendon; he doesn't think he can face the other man right now), even when they're walking through the front door of Patrick's apartment, Pete's arm around his shoulder and traces of tears still on his cheeks. 

"Patrick," Pete says when he tries walking off. "We need to talk."

So he turns back around, silently walks over to the couch, and sits down. He can feel Pete next to him, and not just physically but emotionally, mentally, in ways that, honestly, kind of creep him out. 

The one thing that really surprises him is that he doesn't really feel that different; his feelings towards Pete are pretty much the same. He isn't suddenly head-over-heels for Pete, isn't suddenly terrified of losing him; everything feels the same. Except now he doesn't really need to read Pete's emotions through his eyes; he can vaguely sense how he feels just by thinking about it. 

"Trick," Pete starts slowly, as Patrick looks down at his hands, still numb, "Trick, I-"

Patrick looks up, meeting Pete's eyes. The colors are beginning to fade, absorbing into the mental connection they now have, but he can still see enough purple to feel a stab in his chest he can't ignore. 

He looks back down at his hands. "I'm sorry." 

There's a disbelieving huff. "Are you really?"

Patrick blinks. "No." 

Pete shifts forward, opening his arms like he's going to hug the blond. He scoots away. 

"Patrick, seriously, I know what you're going through."

Patrick scoffs, "No you don't."

Silence.

He turns his head slowly around to meet Pete's gaze again. There's faint, muted colors and memories Patrick can almost pull up, full of blood and vomit and pills and-

"Yes, you do," he amends. "...sort of." 

Pete raises an eyebrow, looking kinda offended.  _"Sort_ of?"

Patrick just shakes his head. "Pete, just..." 

The brown-haired man huffs. "Why today?"

Patrick looks away, biting his lip. 

"Patrick. Why today?"

Everything in him's screaming not to say, not to show weakness. He  _hates_ letting people in on his vulnerabilities, despite how, at the same time, that's all he wants to do. 

_"Patrick."_

He finally looks up, meeting eyes with his soulmate. "The soul bond," he says simply. "It takes an average of one week to finish. If I wanted to off myself, now was the best time, before the bond finalized and forced you to care about me." 

Pete  _flinches._ He fucking  _flinches. "Forced_ me to care about you?" he gets out. "Patrick, that's- that's not how the bond works. It doesn't  _force_ anybody." 

Patrick scoffs. "Of course it does. That's what I've seen all my life. People meet their soulmates, bond, then  _boom!"_ he claps his hands together. "The bond finishes and all of a sudden, there's  _love,"_ he spits the word, "In their eyes. Now tell me, how is what I've said about that wrong? How is something I've seen-  _you've_ seen- your entire life  _not_ the fucking soulbond forcing soulmates to _love_ each other?"

"Patrick," Pete says softly, pain flickering in his gaze. 

"But of course you're going to say it's all a lie, aren't you?" he practically spits at Pete, ignoring the wrenching pain in his heart when there's a ghost sensation of pain from Pete's mind. "Of  _course_ you will! You majored in the fucking bullshit! You're gonna defend it until the end, aren't you? You're going to pretend that the soulbond does no wrong, oh mighty soulbond," he's spitting each word now, sarcasm so deeply embedded in he doubted he could take it out of he tried, "We must all bow before it, right?"

"Patrick." 

"You'd never even  _consider_ it could be wrong! That it forces two people to have a connection deeper than they'd otherwise have, even if they  _don't_ care about each other. That it forces people to  _love_ each other."

_"Patrick."_

"Until," he smiles, a cold, deadly, filled with pain smile, "Until all of a sudden, there's an argument, they spend the night in separate beds, the bond weakens. And then it twists. And then," he hisses, wanting to reach forward to grab Pete's collar but stopping himself, "And then it warps into something else entirely. Until all it is is just another  _tool_ for the dominant partner to use to  _hurt_ the other one. Until all of a sudden, there are  _bruises,_ and screaming, and 5-year-old  _kids_ peeking out from behind tables, terrified that what's happening to their mother is going to find them, next." 

Silence. Absolute, chilling silence.

"Patrick. You- you didn't-"

He laughs, a tinge bitterly though he tries to keep it neutral. "Yeah. Every single night, for years. I had to watch as my mother, the woman who had raised me, got beaten to a bloody pulp  _every. Single. Night."_

"Did- did he ever?" the unspoken question hangs in the air; Patrick's shaking his head before Pete can even finish it. 

"No. He never hit me." he hesitates. "Not intentionally, at least." 

There's a broken, harsh half-sob and Pete's arms come around him. "Oh, Patrick. Patrick, dude, I'm-" he stops, cuts himself off before he can say  _sorry._

Patrick  _hates_ the word sorry. Hates it because it's what his dad said to his mom, every morning when she regained consciousness on the kitchen floor, lying in a pool of her own blood. Hates it because, that night, or maybe a few nights later, it'd happen all over again. 

"It's okay," he reassures Pete, even though they both know it's a lie. "It's okay." 

 

* * *

 

It's not until the next day that Pete brings up the soul bond again. 

"Hey, Pattycakes."

Patrick shoots him a glare. "I told you not to call me that." 

Pete ignores him. "Wanna watch something?" they had both just been sitting aimlessly on various chairs and couches all day (Pete carefully avoiding all mentions of food), in a sort of slightly uncomfortable silence neither of them had particularly wanted to break. 

Patrick shrugs, standing up and pretending just that little effort doesn't make him lightheaded. He also pretends that Pete's little frown is nonexistent. "Sure," he agrees as easily as he can get his voice to manage. "What were you thinking?"

He knows what's coming before Pete even opens his mouth.  _"No,"_ he groans, "Not Supernatural, not again. I can't take that show. It's crazy." 

Pete gives him a winning smile. "Aw, come on, you know you love it." 

He groans again, starting to walk over to the couch to sit down. "I really, really don't." But he's already sitting next to Pete (well, a couple feet away from him but same thing), leaning back against the cushions as Pete grabs the remote and flips to Netflix.

 

* * *

 

It's hours later before either of them speak again, both of them  _way_ too engrossed in the show, but at the end of season three (where Patrick is  _definitely not_ tearing up), Pete finally breaks the silence.

"You're wrong, you know. About- about that."

"About what?" he asks, even though he knows full well what Pete's talking about.

"The soulbond."

Patrick bristles. "And how would that be, exactly?" 

The next episode of Supernatural starts up, with creepy weird flashbacks and screaming and a hand sticking up from out of the grave; Pete presses pause and turns to him.

"One of the first things we learned in my 3rd year Soulmate Psychology class was all about the soulbond. How it works, how it can get twisted, all of that."

Patrick stays silent, waiting for Pete to get to the point.

"You know what we learned?" 

Silence.

Pete leans forward, brushing Patrick's cheek gently. The blond pretends the shiver that runs down his spine is only because of the cold (which is probably at least partially true given how he's  _always_ cold). "Soul bonds," he states slowly, thumb brushing Patrick's chin, "Take a week to finish for a  _reason._ They aren't designed to  _make_ you feel anything; they're designed to  _amplify_ what you already feel.  _That's_ why, all of a sudden, you see so much more love in people's eyes. It's not that they didn't love each other before, it's just that the soul bond makes their connection stronger." _  
_

Patrick thinks he could've, very possibly, forgotten to breathe and blames Pete's hand on his face. "So that's why, my parents-"

Pete nods, pain in his eyes. "Once your dad started to dislike her, the soul bond seized on and amplified that. It's not supposed to happen but it does, very rarely. It usually only happens when the bonding process got disrupted somehow."

Patrick just nods. "So, what we feel, now, it's-"

"It's us," Pete confirms. "It's us, just without constraint now." he grins, his eyes crinkling around the edges in that smile Patrick likes to pretend he hates (he's a fucking liar, he could never hate that smile). And then he leans forward. 

And Patrick lets him. 

 

* * *

 

It's definitely not the first kiss he's ever had, but it could easily be one of the best. Pete's lips are kinda chapped, and he's a little sloppy (Patrick's  _definitely_ using that as teasing ammo later) in his haste, but none of that really seems to matter. It's all overwhelmed by this sense of  _rightness,_ like this is what they should be doing,  _this_ is who they belong with. 

Patrick doesn't think he could get enough of it. 

But then Pete's hands start to wander away from Patrick's cheeks he'd been cupping seconds before, sliding downwards along his neck to his- his ~~skeletal~~ (too fat) shoulders and  _fuck._

He can't let Pete know how broken he is. It doesn't matter if Pete's his soulmate, if they're supposed to belong together. He still can't risk something happening- and if it happened to his parents, why shouldn't it happen to a fuck-up like him? 

He stills; Pete pulls back instantly, although his hands still remain on Patrick's  _too fat_ body. "What's wrong, baby?" 

And-  _nope._ Patrick's just going to pretend that that look, that color in his eyes, wasn't pure adoration. Nope. 

"Nothing," he lies, regretting it instantly when Pete just gives him a skeptic, slightly hurt look. "Just- I just, I was-"  _think, you idiot!_ "I just tried to kill myself yesterday."

"You know I don't care about that. Fuck, I've tried to do that myself; why the fuck would you think I'd care about  _that?"_ the hurt's growing now; Patrick needs to stop it. 

"It's not," he stammers, "It's not that, just, just, it feels like we're, you know, kinda moving fast, maybe? Like, I was about to kill myself and then the next day we're doing this, and I just don't know if I'm ready for this and, and-"

Pete presses a finger against his lips, stopping him in his tracks. "Shhh. It's okay, Trick. I getcha, I'm okay with taking it slow." he smiles, the hurt finally gone from his eyes and replaced with something that looks a lot like-  _nope._

Patrick's relief is so great he almost slumps, tension finally dissipating. Good. He has time to, to get himself together- to finally get himself, well, not  _pretty because how could_ he  _ever look_ pretty? But maybe...presentable? Okay-looking? Not the fatty he is currently? He has time to make himself perfect, because perfect is what Pete deserves, and Patrick doesn't want to give him anything less. 

He has time. 

 

* * *

 

 

_Shit._

He didn't- he didn't- he didn't  _mean to do that._ _Fuck._ He hadn't meant to-

White-faced, he clings to the wall, shivering from the cold of the 72 degrees room. He hadn't  _meant_ to eat that much. Pete just looked so  _happy,_ he kept smiling that huge smile that made Patrick think Pete could really be the sun itself, he looked so- so  _proud._ Patrick just couldn't  _stop_ eating, because his soulmate looked happy, and in that moment he realized he'd do  _anything_ to make Pete happy. 

It wasn't until later that Patrick had slapped sense back into himself.  _Being a huge, fat, stupid man like you are isn't going to fucking make him_ happy, he snaps at himself.  _What's gonna make him_ happy  _is you actually getting control of yourself and fucking losing weight! He doesn't want some imperfect, worthless piece of shit for his_ soulmate! 

He takes a deep, steadying breath and lets go of the wall.  _So now, you're going to go in that bathroom, and you're going to do what will make both of you happy. You are going to close the door, turn on the shower, kneel at the toilet, and throw that disgusting shit back up._

He closes his eyes.  _You understand?_ _  
_

He opens them. And takes a step towards the bathroom.  _Good._

He takes another one, entering the room.  _Now close the door._ He does so.

_Turn on the shower. You already have a towel in here so you'll be fine._ He turns on the faucet, using cold water only because he doesn't want to take away the building's hot water for a shower he's not even taking. 

_Kneel._ He lifts the lid to the toilet and sits down, trying to calm his breathing.  _You know what you have to do now._

He doesn't want to. He  _really_ doesn't want to. 

_Do it._

He opens his mouth. 

_Do it._

He cringes, then thrusts his hand towards the back of his throat. 

The entire contents of his meal come up as he retches, emptying his sins and all his  _fat_ into the toilet. 

_Good._

He looks down, at his hand. It's covered in vomit and bloody from where he accidentally scraped it against his molars on his way out. He needs to clean it up, that much he knows. It wouldn't do to let Pete see that. 

He starts shaking, then, like some sort of trauma victim who'd finally begun to register what had been done to them, and his eyes water. 

_Calm down,_ he tells himself harshly. He forces himself to stand up, ignoring the usual black spots and dizziness, and dunks his face into the freezing shower water- _gotta make it look convincing-_ before turning it off. 

Then he grabs his towel, slings it over his shoulder, and walks out of the bathroom.

Only to see Pete standing there. Right in front of him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...I have now successfully ended two chapters in a row on cliffhangers. Hate me yet?   
> Probably. Sorry about that.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: The lyrics in this chapter are basically What a Catch, Donnie, although I have modified them a bit in order to make them fit the story a bit better, as well as taking out a few repetitive bits as I feel Pete wouldn't want to write the same thing over and over again just as a lyric.  
> TW: Mentions/references of purging and eating disorders.

"P-Pete. H-hey. I-I didn't know you were out there." 

"Of course you didn't," Pete says quietly. "You wouldn't have fucking  _purged_ if you knew I was."

"I- I didn't-"

"Patrick. Don't lie to me. I thought we were past this." 

"Pete-"

The older man sighs heavily. "C'mere."

Numbly, Patrick walks over, expecting- he doesn't know, a slap, maybe? Or a punch? A screamed insult telling him how much of a fuck up he is? Instead, there are arms wrapped tightly around his (still  _fat)_ torso, squeezing him in a way he finds strangely comforting. 

"Oh, Patrick," he says softly, burying his face into the blond's shoulder. "My Patrick. Who did this to you?"

"Me," Patrick mumbles. "I did this to myself. I let myself become fat, I did this. I'm fucking-" he stops, shaking his head. 

"Patrick, just- Rickster. You're not- you aren't eating. And when you do, you're throwing it all up. You're not fat, you're  _skin and bones._ You're  _skeletal,_ Patrick."

"No, I'm not." 

"Patrick, Patrick look at me," Pete says, tilting Patrick's head gently. "You're  _killing_ yourself. I don't know what kind of delusion you're operating under, but you are slowly destroying yourself. And I have watched you do this for more than a week now and I can't take it any longer." 

"It's just a week," Patrick says weakly, not sure where he's even going with that. 

"Except those habits don't just come and go. They start, slowly at first, and then they fester and rot and  _kill_ you, Patrick. You're killing yourself and you're making me watch and that's something I  _can't_ fucking watch, okay?!" 

"Pete-"

"No! Patrick, it needs to  _stop!_ You're hurting yourself so, so much, for no reason."

"For  _no reason?"_ Patrick hisses, drawing back, eyes filling with hurt and anger. "My reasons are perfectly  _fine,_ Pete. And it's  _my_ body, I can do whatever the fuck I please with it!"

"You're going to get nowhere if you keep doing this, Patrick! Things like these- you can't just rebound from them when you feel like it. It takes days and months and  _years,_ fucking  _years_ once you fall and you won't be able to just get back up easily!" 

"I know that," Patrick snaps, "I know that, Pete."

"Then why do you keep doing it?" 

Patrick grits his teeth, trying to disentangle himself from Pete's arms. "No, Patrick, you don't get to run away again. Not this time." 

"Let me go! Just- just  _stop_ Pete, please just  _stop."_

"Never," Pete hisses. "I'm never going to let you hurt yourself again like that. Not if I can help it." 

Patrick deflates, slumping into Pete's grip. "Please," he says again, defeatedly. "Please just let me." 

"No, Trick. No." 

"Please," he repeats over and over again, sobs mingling with his words. "Pete, I need to. I  _need_ it."

"Why?" Pete asks softly, stroking Patrick's hair gently. "Why do you need to destroy yourself like this?"

Silence.

"Patrick. Please. I  _need_ to know." 

"I'm making myself better," Patrick whispers brokenly. "Maybe, if I can...can finally get thin...I can..."

"Can what? Patrick, you can what?" 

"Maybe I can make...make you stay." he shudders, a broken sob ensuing from his mouth and he buries his face into Pete's shoulder. 

 _"Patrick,"_ Pete whispers. "Patrick, I'm going to stay anyways. There's nothing you could do to make me leave."

"You say that now," Patrick sniffles, "But you'll change your mind later. How could you  _not,_ after all, with someone like- like  _me?"_

"How could I  _leave,_ with someone as  _amazing_ as you?" Pete corrects, tightening his grip on Patrick. "You're the sweetest, cutest little dude I've ever met. You can sing, compose, play more instruments than I can count on one hand, you once tried to trap a mouse by holding cheese in one hand because you didn't want to kill it, and you cried when you had to hairspray a spider to death in your shower. I couldn't pick a better man, or woman, or person in general, to have for a soulmate if I tried." 

Patrick just shakes his head into Pete's shoulder, trying to muffle his sobs and failing miserably. "You're wrong, Pete. You're fucking wrong." 

"Don't say that," Pete growls, lifting Patrick's head forcibly to meet his eyes. "You're fucking  _amazing,_ Patrick. Don't you ever forget that." 

 

* * *

 

They're at Pete's recording studio and the older man looks more nervous than Patrick's ever seen him.

"Okay, seriously, Pete, what's going on?" Patrick asks him for about the 1000th time. 

"Shh," is Pete's response, also for about the 1000th time. "We're almost there." 

"This better be fucking good," Patrick grumbles, following Pete around the building to the door. It's been almost three weeks since they first met, now, and about a week since Pete was standing outside the bathroom door listening to everything. Surprisingly, they haven't even talked about it since then, but Patrick's pretty sure Pete has something up his sleeve and this impromptu visit to the studio affirms it. 

Then they're inside the building, heading towards studio A, and then they're inside it. Patrick's heart is thudding in his chest, whether from nerves or anticipation he's not sure.

"Patrick." Pete hands him a bundle of papers.

"What are these?"

"Read them." he looks nervous, Patrick notices.  _Really_ nervous. What the fuck could be in these papers to make him look like that? 

So he opens them and-  _oh._

_I've got troubled thoughts and the self esteem to match. What a catch, what a catch._

"Pete?" 

"Keep reading," he says softly. 

 

_You'll never catch me, so just let me be. You said "I'll be fine til the hospital, or American embassy."_

_Miss Flack said, "I still want you back."_

_Miss Flack said, "I still want you back."_

_I've got troubled thoughts and the self esteem to match, what a catch, what a catch._

_And all I can think of is the way I'm the one who charmed the one who gave up on you, who gave up on you._

_  
_

"Pete," Patrick says softly.

"Just- just keep reading." his voice shakes and Patrick has a bad feeling he knows why. 

_  
_

_They say the captain goes down with the ship._

_So, when the world ends, will God go down with it?_

_Miss Flack said "I_ still  _want you back, yeah,"_

_Miss Flack said "I still want you back."_

_  
_

_'I will never end up like them'_

_Behind my back, you already are._

_Keep a calendar, this way you will always see._

_  
_

_You said, "I've got troubled thoughts and the self-esteem to match, what a catch, what a catch._

_And all I can think of is the way I'm the one who charmed the one who gave up on you, who gave up on you._

_  
_

_"I've got troubled thoughts and the self-esteem to match, what a catch, what a catch."_

_  
_

"Pete, oh my God Pete." 

They're in each others arms before either of them can really even breathe, Patrick trying desperately to keep his tears back and Pete already long gone. 

"Pete, oh God, Pete," Patrick just says over and over again, the words mixing with his tears until they're not even coherent anymore. 

Reading it was like reading himself, only clearer. It was like Pete  _knew_ him, knew every thought he'd had and had put it into words. 

It's terrifying, but it's calming at the same time and Patrick realizes one thing. 

He's in love with this man. 

"Do you see now, Patrick?" Pete asks, words stuttering as he tries to steady his sobs. "Do you see how I feel now?" 

He closes his eyes against the growing tears. 

_Miss Flack said, "I still want you back."_

_I still want you back._

_I still want you, Patrick._

"Yeah," he gulps, "Yeah, I- I think so." 

"I'm never going to leave you unless you leave me first." 

_And all I can think of is the way I'm the one who charmed the one who gave up on you, who gave up on you._

"But, Patrick, you're destroying yourself." 

_Said "I'll be fine til the hospital, or American embassy."_

"And we both know that, now. You can't deny it any longer, Patrick." 

_'I will never end up like them'_

_Behind my back, you already are._

"You're going to kill yourself. You're gonna become one of them. You already  _are_ one of them and I can't- I can't let that continue any longer." 

"I know."  _I just don't know how to stop it, Pete. Help me._

"I want to help you. I want to be with you every step of the way, and I want to show you how wrong you are about yourself." 

_I've got troubled thoughts and the self-esteem to match, what a catch, what a catch._

"Will you let me do that?" 

He hesitates, but it's only for a second. 

And he realizes that he doesn't want to say  _yes_ because he believes a relationship can fix him, but because he knows Pete understands. And that understanding might help him pull through. 

So when he says "Yes, Pete" there's really another meaning beneath it. 

_I love you._

_  
_

* * *

 

"Patrick!" 

He doesn't respond, too busy glaring at his reflection in the mirror. There are thousands of words he wants to use to describe himself, but none of them feel adequate, each of them wrong in their own way. 

_Disgusting? Not enough._

_Fat? Too obvious._

"Patrick! Open up!" 

_Worthless?_

_Maybe._

"Patrick, I swear to God if you don't open this door, I'll kick it down myself!" 

"Calm down," Patrick tells him, rolling his eyes as he goes to unlock the door. His voice wobbles the tiniest bit. 

"Patrick, baby, what's going on?" 

He opens his mouth to give him a serene smile and a blase "nothing, I'm fine," but he stops. Pete would call his bluff anyways, now that their whole mental connection has grown stronger than ever, and Patrick kind of wants to stop lying, for once. 

So he goes forward, walks straight into Pete's open arms, and then he starts talking. 

 

* * *

 

"You're gonna be okay, Trick, you're gonna be okay." The words have practically lost their meaning now, Pete's used them so many times. Patrick just sits silently there at the foot of the toilet, wishing he could just stop- stop  _sucking_ so much. Why can't everything just go back to normal? Why can't he just  _stop_ wanting to throw up? 

He never realized until a month or so ago how much of this was used as a coping mechanism- and how much he depended on it to pull him through. Now that he's actively trying to stop it, it's living hell to be without the constant throwing up or starving and the blood running down his arms. It was only a matter of time before he broke, and that day is today. 

"I can't even go a month without purging," Patrick snaps bitterly. "This isn't going to work, Pete. It  _can't_ work."

"Calm down," Pete says softly, kneeling and putting his forehead against Patrick's. Through their mental link, he can feel the older man's calm and, despite himself, some of it leaks over to his own head. "You're going to be okay, Trick. Maybe not for a while, maybe not for months or years, even, but you  _will_ be okay eventually. You just need to stay." he presses a light kiss to Patrick's forehead and the blond relaxes into it. "Just stay with me, Patrick. Promise me." 

"I promise," he whispers. 

 

* * *

 

 

There's blood everywhere.

Patrick's not even sure how it all got there; he just knows that Pete's gone and he's  _alone_ again and he  _needs_ something else now that Pete's soft distractions aren't available. 

"Pete," he croaks into the phone he didn't even know he was holding. "Pete, I fucked up." 

"Patrick, how bad is it?" 

He's silent for a long moment, gazing down at himself. How bad  _is_ it? 

 _"Patrick!_ How bad is it?"

"Bad," he whispers, losing his grip on the counter and hitting the floor with a thud. "Really, really bad. Pete, I don't think I'm gonna pull through this time." 

"Yes, you are!" Pete growls. He can feel his soulmate's desperation all the way from where Pete is, miles away from him and it cuts into his soul. "You promised me you'd stay with me, Patrick. You  _promised."_

"I know," Patrick whispers brokenly. "I know I did. I just- I don't think I can fix this."

"You can," Pete tells him. Patrick can  _feel_ his fear. "You can, but you need to stop doing this for me. This is for  _you._ There's no point in living if it's just for me, Rickster. You need to live for  _yourself._ So  _do_ it. Live for yourself, now." 

"I don't- I don't know if I can," he gasps out, but his fingers are reaching towards Pete's towel he'd hung up earlier that day. 

"You live for yourself, Patrick. You live for  _both_ of us. Now keep yourself alive until I can get there, okay? You find something to stop the bleeding until I can get you an ambulance." 

He nods wordlessly, too exhausted to say anything and knowing Pete can sense it over their mental link anyways. "Okay." 

He grabs the towel and presses it against his arm, hard. It's agony but he knows it's his only chance to stop the bleeding enough for them to get to the hospital. 

 _For us,_ he tells Pete silently.  _And for me. I'll live for me, now, too._

 

* * *

 

 

"Rise and shine, Rick ta life!" 

Patrick groans, keeping his eyes closed. "I told you not to call me that."

"Why? Would you prefer I call you Pat? Or Patty boy?" 

"Just go away," Patrick mumbles into his pillow, putting it over his head in an attempt to block Pete out. 

"Not gonna happen," Pete tells him. "It's our three-month anniversary and I want to do something special."

"Who the hell even celebrates three-month anniversaries?" 

"We do," Pete says simply, and then he grabs Patrick and lifts him bodily off the bed, staggering a little under his newly gained back weight. 

Patrick just grins down at Pete when he grunts from the exertion, the familiar thoughts plaguing him much easier to sweep away now because he's  _better_ now, and it's not just because of Pete, it's because of himself, and he loves that it wasn't just one of them that got him to this point, but both of them, working together. As a team.

That's what they are, really. A team. Pete and Patrick. 

"You're heavier," Pete comments quietly, pride in his eyes. 

"Yeah, I guess I am." he tries not to shift away. Insecurity  _does_ still linger, probably will all his life, but it's no longer so bad he wants to hurt himself to get away from it. He knows that that's a very, very good thing. 

Pete puts Patrick down on the ground, his eyes crinkling around the edges as he smiles. "You're beautiful." 

Patrick thinks he has a right to the brilliant shade of red he turns. "Shut up." 

"Unh uh. You're the cutest little dude I've ever known and you deserve to know it." he smiles, brushing Patrick's cheek and pressing their lips together. By the time he draws back, Patrick's even redder, and he's so cute Pete can barely stand it. 

"Where are we going?" Patrick asks, obviously flustered and scratching his head awkwardly. 

"You're adorable." 

He flushes red again. "Pete, stop. Where are we going?" 

"You are, though. And I thought, maybe a movie?" 

"Yeah, that's fine, doesn't matter which one to me as long as it's not, like, X or something."

"Aww, my little Rickster, too good for this world, too pure."

"Fuck off," Patrick tells him but he can't hide the fact he's blushing so hard he could be on fire. 

Pete grins at him and that's the moment he decides what game he's gonna play today; Make Patrick Blush. 

 

* * *

 

The game's really not that hard at all, to be honest. All he has to do is call him his boyfriend in front of a stranger, pick a flower and hand it to him, brush his lips across Patrick's cheek- almost anything, really. He'd never noticed just how easy it was to make his soulmate blush until he was actually trying. 

"I might not go down in history," he whispers to Patrick in the darkness of the theater, reveling in the shiver Patrick makes, "But I'll go down on you."

 _"Pete!"_ Patrick chokes, the movie screen just bright enough he can make out how hard the blond is blushing. 

"You know what I like in a boy?"

"Pete, shut up, I'm trying to watch the movie." 

"Do you?"

Patrick sighs. "What?" 

Pete makes a show of looking around, even though there's next to no one in the theater and the ones that are aren't anywhere near them. "My dick." 

"Pete, stop." 

"Pizza is my second favorite thing to eat in my bed," Pete tries next, winking. 

 _"Pete."_ he's somewhere between laughing, crying, and blushing, covering his face with his hands and Pete's never seen a more adorable sight in his life. 

"Wanna play army? I can lay down and you'll blow the hell out of me." 

Patrick actually slaps him, his glare just about as intimidating as a baby panda's and it only makes Pete want to try harder. "Ooh, kinky, are we?" 

Another slap. Patrick's face is still burning. 

"You're gorgeous when you blush like that." 

 _"Pete,_ stop."

"What's the matter? Can't take it?"

"No," Patrick grumbles, "I can't. You're making me blush on purpose, aren't you?"

"Can you blame me when you're as cute as that when you do it?" he looks down at the younger man, eyes flickering to his lips. He's tasted them before, of course, but he wants to know what they'd taste like when they're swollen and kiss-bruised, how Patrick's mouth feels when he's sated and exhausted and about to go to sleep, if Patrick leans forward into good morning kisses or shies away.

"Pete, I swear to-" 

Pete doesn't get to hear what Patrick was going to swear to, or about, because he's on top of the younger man, lips pressed against lips and tongues tangling together. 

"Mmf, Pe-" Patrick tries to say when they break for air but Pete cuts him off again with a passionate kiss, tangling his fingers up in Patrick's hair. 

His hands are everywhere, and Patrick's are too, sliding down each other's bodies, lingering at some points and pressing or squeezing at sensitive points that make the other moan. 

"Pete," Patrick whispers breathlessly, panting, lips swollen and as red as his flushed face. "Let's go home." 

"Why?" Pete asks, pressing a kiss to Patrick's neck and grinning as he gasps. "I'd say we're fine here." 

"I've never done this before," Patrick says softly, blushing again. "I want it to be, you know, more than a hurried fuck in a movie theater." 

"You've never done this before?" Yeah, he knows it shouldn't be a surprise; people wanting to wait to have sex for the first time with their soulmates is fairly common, but somehow, he hadn't felt like Patrick would be that kind of person...or that Patrick wouldn't have found at least some guy he found attractive enough to do it anyway. 

"No," Patrick admits, looking away. "Is that- I'm sorry, I wish I had more experience, you probably don't want to have sex with someone as inexperienced as m-"

"Hush," Pete commands softly, looking around briefly to make sure no one's listening to their conversation (there's an action scene going on right now; he doubts anyone could hear them if they tried). "I've already told you, you're perfect the way you are and I don't giving a flying fuck how much experience you have. You're my Patrick and nothing's gonna change that. Now," he stands up, eyeing Patrick up and down with a smirk, "Let's go and get started already." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need to apologize for this horrific chapter. I have no idea what happened and I did not intend to make recovery seem as easy as I think I did. I tried to make it seem like it was a thing Patrick wanted for himself, not just a thing Pete and his relationship was doing for him, but I feel like I did a pretty crappy job and I just don't have enough inspiration or time to fix that. So I'm sorry, especially for those who were probably hoping I would give them a true to life portrayal of the slow path of recovery.  
> On the bright side, the fic's almost done, so if you now hate me (or already did and hate me more now), at least you won't have to suffer much longer. Yay?  
> UPDATE: I added like three more scenes to the middle so hopefully that will make it seemed more real and less rushed. Hopefully.


	10. Chapter 10

The taxi ride is hell. 

Patrick's hands never leave him, groping and stroking and squeezing in ways a virgin should  _not_ know how to do. It's all Pete can do to stay quiet, let alone think about payback.

"Patrick!" he hisses after several minutes of this torture. "What the hell are you doing?" 

The ginger (apparently he's naturally brownish-ginger when the hair dye grows out, who knew?) gives him an innocent grin, squeezing his ass gently. He jerks. "What do you mean, Pete?" 

"You fucking know what I mean," he grumbles, not sure if he's trying to shift away or lean into Patrick's touch. "I thought you told me you were a virgin." 

Patrick scoffs. "I said virgin, not never touched a dude in my life!" 

"So...you've kissed people?"

Patrick hesitates, drawing back. "Ye-es? I-Is that bad? Are you mad that I have?" 

He laughs, leaning back into the ginger. "I've had sex with people, Tricky. If you're not mad about that, I'm definitely not mad about you kissing a few guys."

"And girls?"

Pete shrugs, reining in the flicker of surprise. "And girls." 

"We're here," the taxi driver calls back and pulls to a stop at Patrick's apartment. 

The two men practically fall over each other getting out, Patrick passing a ten to the driver in payment and calling 'keep the change!' over his shoulder as they run. 

Patrick's barely closed the door behind them before Pete's on him. He's not everywhere, that's not physically possible, but his lips are on Patrick's and his hands moving along his entire body and- and  _fuck,_ they're actually going to do this, aren't they? 

He hears a moan come out from himself as Pete pulls back and slaps a hand in front of his mouth in horror, cheeks flushing red. 

"Patrick," Pete says lowly, running a finger across the other man's cheek, "What do you say we get this to a bed? As much as I'd love banging you against our front door, I'd very much like to see you.  _All_ of you."

Patrick shivers. "Then let's hurry the fuck up," he manages.

The older man grins and bends down, picks him up in a bridal hold, and starts running for Patrick's bedroom. "Like this?"

"Put me down!"

"You wanted to get there quickly!" 

He glares, purposely trying to shift to make it harder for Pete. "Put me the fuck down, Peter!" 

Pete rolls his eyes and adjusts his grip on the younger man to kick open the door. "I will, just let me get to the bed before I do it." 

The ginger groans but relaxes into Pete's arms, not saying anything until Pete's throwing him down on the bed, kicking off their shoes and towering above him with a grin. 

"So, Tri-" 

He pulls Pete down before he can finish, kissing him hard. "No more talking," he mumbles when he pulls back. "Just doing." 

Pete laughs and looses a button on Patrick's shirt. "Never," he promises, pressing a kiss to Patrick's forehead. "I'm gonna make sure you know just how gorgeous you are." 

He shifts a bit nervously and averts his eyes. "I'm no- I don't think that's-"

"Quiet," Pete commands softly. "I'm the one who's going to do the talking here, not you." 

"Pete-"

"I said, hush. Let me do it. Let me give you what you deserve." 

Patrick finally, finally stays quiet. Pete tugs his shirt over his head in one swift moment and starts on Patrick's own button-down, kissing him hard to distract him. 

"P-Pete-" Patrick tries again when the shirt's half off him, wiggling away as well he can, "Pete, st-stop."

"Why?" Pete challenges, brushing his lips over Patrick's exposed shoulder. "So I can't see you?" Patrick stays silent. "Don't you want this?"

"I-I do, but-" 

"But nothing, Patrick. Let me make love to you." he tilts Patrick's head up to look at him after a moment of silence. "Please, Tricky." 

"I..." he bites his lip, hands twitching at his sides like he wants to cover himself up. "...fine." 

Pete's hands dart back to the half-unbuttoned shirt, finishing it off in seconds. Then it's off and he's ripping off his pants, Patrick copying him and finally ending up with the two of them in their underwear only. 

 _He's beautiful,_ is Pete's only thought.  _You're beautiful._

Patrick turns brilliant red.  _Shut up,_ he thinks back but makes no attempt to shut down their mental link like he has so many times before. 

"You are, though," Pete murmurs, this time out loud, lips skimming over his body. "You've got just the right kind of body for me." 

Patrick opens his mouth to protest but doesn't get very far, instead letting out a surprised moan when Pete latches on to one of his nipples, laving his tongue over it and running a hand down the rest of his body.

Everything is new; the feeling of Pete's lips on his body, his hands trailing across and around and over  _everything,_ his voice when he breaks for air and murmurs some low something that could be "beautiful" but Patrick really isn't paying attention. 

Then he's gone and Patrick lets out a whimper that makes Pete laugh. "Close your eyes."

"Why?"

"Do you trust me?" 

Patrick huffs, but he's too aroused to refuse- and besides, he  _does_  trust Pete."Yeah." _  
_

"Then eyes closed." 

So he does. And then Pete's kissing his eyelids, more of a brush than anything, brushing a hand down around and in back of his neck. Then he's traveling down, stopping on Patrick's lips briefly, going further and further down until he's sucking on his neck and Patrick loses all coherent thought. 

Vaguely, he retains enough to realize just how loud and embarrassing his moans must be and tries to shut up, but the moment he does so, Pete stops, too.

"I wanna hear you, Patrick," he tells him, voice low and practically a growl. "I wanna hear every," he leans down and sucks on Patrick's pulse point, making him gasp, "little," he nibbles on a piece of skin in between Patrick's ribs, "sound you make, Patrick. Every little gasp and moan." 

He doesn't respond- can't really, except for by his ever-increasing moans and little gasps and  _"fuck,_ Pete"'s, but Pete seems to take it as one because he travels lower and lower, closer to where Patrick wants him-  _needs_ him. Then he's past it, nibbling and sucking on Patrick's inner thigh. 

 _"Pete,"_ Patrick whimpers, bucking his hips. "Pete, p-please." 

There's a low laugh, the vibration from it traveling up Patrick's skin and making him shiver. "Not yet, Lunchbox. I wanna make you feel good first."

"I a-already feel goo- oh,  _fuck, Pete!"_

There's another laugh and Pete draws back from Patrick's cock with a parting lick. "Turn over."

"Wha- why?" he looks up at Pete then gulps. "Oh." He flips over slowly, fighting the urge to roll himself into a ball- he's so exposed,  _too_ exposed, he has no idea what Pete is thinking or gonna do, he's  _scared._

 _This is your soulmate we're talking about,_ he growls at himself,  _Pete wouldn't hurt you._

But images flash in front of him; his mother sobbing in a pool of broken glass, his father's door slamming in a fit of rage, a muted scream when a shard of wood pierced her flesh. 

_He's not gonna hurt you, Patrick._

Faintly, he's aware of Pete's presence behind him, searching for what he presumes is lube. He  _knows_ Pete would never hurt him, especially not intentionally, but still...

"You're safe with me, Patrick," Pete says softly. "I'll never be like your dad. I promise." 

He turns his head, locking eyes with Pete. The soul bond's completed now, and Pete's eyes are brown, this gorgeous honey kind of color that almost makes Patrick want to write a song, and right then they're the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. 

"H-how did you know?" 

"Tricky, we're soulmates. Just because you've never wanted to tap into my thoughts doesn't mean you don't accidentally send all yours out to me." 

He turns deep red,  _"All_ of them?" 

Pete smirks. "Yep. Even that one fantasy you had with the gag. Very entertaining, really." 

"P-Pete!" Patrick sputters, fairly certain he's red from head to toe. 

Pete grins and his eyes flicker up and down Patrick appreciatively (yep, he's definitely completely red) before they return to the younger man's eyes and the grin fades. "But seriously, Patrick. I will  _never_ hurt you unless, like, you ever want that fantasy lived out in full or something." 

Patrick glares at him. "That was  _one_ time, Pete!" 

"Sure it was, Tricky." he sighs. "But really. I won't. You're safe with me, okay?" 

Patrick turns his head back to facing front, away from Pete. "I..." 

_I trust you._

There's a quieter thought, deeper within him, that he doesn't send out;  _I love you._

 

_***_

 

**One Year Later**

 

"Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III, do you take your soulmate, Patrick Martin Vaughn Stump, as your lawfully wedded husband?"

Pete smiles softly at his soulmate standing across from him.  _You look gorgeous today, by the way,_ he thinks, smile widening when Patrick goes red. 

_Shut up!_

There's a pause. 

_You do, too. I guess._

His grin widens even further but before he can respond, they're interrupted by the minister stepping on Pete's foot. "If you could concentrate," the other man hisses at them reprovingly.

"Sorry," Pete mutters. Then, louder, "I do." 

"And Patrick Martin Vaughn Stump, do you take your soulmate, Pete Wentz, as your lawfully wedded husband?" 

 _What if I say no?_ Patrick asks Pete silently, fighting back a smirk. 

 _Then we have to do this again, and I really don't want to spend that much money_ again. 

_You sure?_

Yes,  _Lunchbox,_ Pete rolls his eyes,  _I'm sure._

 _And you're sure you want to get married to...me?_ His eyes sparkle with vulnerability that the minister must pick up on because he wisely says nothing, just looks between the two. 

Pete scoffs silently.  _Of course I do, idiot. We're fucking soulmates, dude, come on._

Patrick raises an eyebrow. 

_And, there's one more, slightly more important thing, Patrick Stump. I'm in love with you._

Patrick grins, but the only thing he says is "I do." 

Then, they're kissing and when they finally break apart, Patrick whispers, "I love you, too." 

And then, the final thing, the only thing that could possibly make this day better, the words "I pronounce you man and husband." 

 

_The End._

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well wasn't that a shitty Christmas present for you all? I'm really, really sorry. I just don't feel like I can continue this fic anymore and give it the well rounded finish it deserves, and I don't particularly want to screw it up if I tried.  
> Thanks for everyone that commented, kudos'ed it, bookmarked it, and just plain read it. I hope you at least sort of liked it and I'm not about to get chased off the proverbial stage by figurative rotten vegetables, as that would be most unpleasant. So yeah, hope you enjoyed this all!
> 
> Side note: is anyone else missing the horizontal line things when you write your chapters? Like, the little things you'd click on and use as scene dividers? They're gone for me, AO3 staff must've taken them, because I have to use asterics now and I really don't like it. Is anyone else experiencing this?


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